WorldPokerTour.com Review
World Poker Tour.com Site Review
I hate to say it but this is one of the weakest websites I’ve reviewed yet. It looks like more time and energy was spent making an annoying flashy design than actually providing meaningful content.
One of the first signs that this would be a bad trip came as soon as I typed the address in to my browser. After I hit enter I was greeted by a loading screen as a flash intro loaded. When the front page finally got itself together, I found a cluttered mess waiting for me.
WorldPokerTour.com Sections
There were three different animated sections on the front page all fighting each other for my attention. There was a big banner across the top that was flashing around between promoting Club WPT (a pay per month poker room w/ cash prizes) and the Game Show Network airings of World Poker Tour events. On the right side of the page was another flash banner promoting Club WPT and on the bottom was an advertisement section that switched among random, non-poker products like walnuts and cheap plane tickets. Very disappointing.
World Poker Tour.com Television
In the navigation bar at the top of the page is a Television link that’s nearly useless. When you click on it, it brings up a page with a list of events along the left side, a video in the middle and a calendar along the right side. If you click on any of the events on the left, it will transfer you to some kind of video section with almost no information about it whatsoever. The only place to find information about television times is the calendar on the right side of the Television page. It was hard to find at first, but dates that are marked in blue can be clicked on to find out what’s playing that day.
World Poker Tour Tournaments Section
The Tournaments section is even better. Click on that and you get a handy world map complete with thumbtacks marking the location of each event. If you hover over one of the thumbtacks, a little popup will appear with the name, date and location of the event. Good luck making that popup go away though! Once you get one up, the only way to get rid of it is to hover over another thumbtack (which will bring up another invincible popup) or refresh the page.
The WPT Stats page was the one part of the website I genuinely enjoyed. It has the stats for all WPT players including number of final tables, percentage of pots played, preflop raise percent, postflop aggression factor, bluff percent and return on investment. It looks like someone’s gotten a hold of a nice little program called Poker Tracker. The only problem with the stats are the tiny sample sizes. The biggest sample they have to work from is 687 hands, which means the stats are pretty close to meaningless. But still, it’s a cool idea.
World Poker Tour.com Players
The Players section at World Poker Tour.com is full of the biographies of the major names of the WPT. Each player has a page dedicated to him or her, including a list of cashes. The Features page is basically just a news section. There are numbers along the bottom of the top picture that can be clicked on to bring up the next news headline (another example of the poor navigation scheme).
While the WPT events may be fun to watch, the website is definitely no good. I recommend you save yourself the time and skip this site. It’s a cluttered mess and will be more likely to give you a headache than provide any meaningful information.
