Just as the World Poker Tour has opened up new frontiers in television and tournament poker, so has the World Poker Tour Boot Camp been a pioneer in poker education. When we started operating in 2004, we were the first to offer formal poker training. Since then, we’ve run hundreds of events in multiple countries. We started with a vision of poker education that would help players at every stage of their development push their game to a higher level. Over the years, we’ve found many new ways to fulfill that vision—and we’re still growing.
Our First Boot Camps
Our first offering was a 2-day Tournament Boot Camp, that focused on teaching players the strategies needed to win at No-Limit Hold’em tournaments. The feedback we got was tremendous. We sold out dozens of camps, and our students kept asking us for more. In response, we created the Champions Camp, a three-day event where we assembled a team of all-star poker pros to teach seminars sharing their areas of expertise.
In 2007, we went on to add a 2-day Cash Camp. We were first to offer formal cash-game training, and it continues to be one of our specialties. Commenting to a reporter on his experience as one of our Cash Camp instructors, Todd Brunson said,
"I absolutely benefited from the camp and I play in the biggest games in the world.
Absolutely any poker player can benefit...from beginner to professional."
Growing and Expanding
WPT Boot Camp was designed to jump-start your poker game and to help you take your play to the next level, no matter what your level of experience. It was important to us, however, that after a Boot Camp, your education didn’t stop. We want to help you continuously develop as a player, so we created Advanced Lab Days.
You can take an Advanced Lab Day immediately following a camp or any time thereafter to reinforce what you’ve learned and refine your game. We designed the lab days so that they could be attended more than once. Every Lab Day is completely dynamic, so each time you attend one, the information you get is different, and it’s always focused on what matters most to you. Throughout the year, we run Advanced Tournament and Cash Lab Days, available to alumni only, so our students will always have a place to go to get their questions answered.
We also wanted to make sure we offered instruction to poker players throughout their development. As we graduated more and more alumni, the level of skill we needed to teach to increased. This led to the development of our 2-Day Clinics for both Cash and Tournaments, focusing on hand analysis, and offering immediate feedback in Labs.
As we expanded what we taught, we also expanded where we taught. Initially, WPT Boot Camps were available in Las Vegas, in Atlantic City, and at Foxwoods. Now you can take a WPT Boot Camp in a dozen other locations and in multiple countries, and we’re adding new venues all the time.
Launching Our Online Site
Poker is a game where even the best players are always learning. We wanted to create a place where you can always come to continue your poker education. At any point in your poker development, we will have courses for you to take, webinars for you to ask questions in real-time, and forums for you to participate in focused poker discussions.
On other sites, the most common way students experience poker training online is watching recorded videos that show real-time play with spontaneous commentary from the player, based on whatever happens to occur that session. There are often hundreds of videos like this available, and it can be difficult to know what topics are going to be covered in each video. For different players at various stages in their development, this poses a problem because there is no clear path for their poker progression.
We wanted to make our online training experience different, so we created formal courses: carefully structured, focused, and complete. This ensures that while taking a course, you are improving a specific area of your poker game. Through years of experience, our pro instructors have figured out the ideal approach to making high-level poker information understandable and easy to use. You’ll benefit from their experience of teaching and coaching thousands of students, from beginners to successful professionals.
Topics for courses have been carefully selected to give you the most complete, well-rounded poker education possible. We’re adding new topics all the time; our goal is to share every nuance of the game, from the fundamental to the exceedingly complex.
Writing the Next Chapter
We’ve spent years working to deliver the best live poker education possible. We’ve continuously reworked and refined all of our camps, bringing in poker experts from both the live and online world to develop our curriculum. What started out as a way to teach poker fundamentals has evolved into a serious, immersive poker education designed to take your game to the next level. We’ve brought that same commitment to online poker training. We invite you to become part of our story and to help us write our next chapter.
