The IPT came so close

J

jjinfla

Banned
Today marks day 50 since the IPT ran out of money.

50 days of speculation and utter helplessness by players and fans.

50 days of asking why? Why did this happen. Why now? Everything looked so good. The players were on a stage and were having fun.

If they only had the money to pay the players for Reno the Chicago event sure would have been a crowning event for pool. That may have let them turn the corner for a prosperous future.

Unfortunately, the money stream just ran out.

Now it is back to $7,000 added tournaments where 1st place may earn the player $2,000. Not much excitement there. No more celebrity status. No more fans. Now is seems that the only real fans that the players had were the IPT staff.

So is it back to business as usual for the players? Will they just go back to showing up for a tournament, play and leave? Or will they start working with TD's to improve their lot. I doubt it. The sad fact is that nobody cares. Not the players. Not the fans. Not the people in the industry. And surely not the general public.

Well, we will just have to go back to watching Allison beat up on all the hopefuls in the WPBA.

Jake
 
"Everything looked so good". You mean, he made you think it looked good -- which was exactly his intention.
The tour never had a chance, no matter how dreamy-eyed you get about it. It was founded by a blatant and obvious crook. It didn't ever stand a snowball's chance is hell of securing mainstream sponsors because of KT's sullied name, but KT is too narcissistic to ever see that. KT never, ever, ever planned for it to be a long term enterprise --- he planned to hype it up and flip it fast. He ran out of his allocated play money before he found a sucker to buy it. And that brings us to today. The rest, as they say, is history.

A con man's stock in trade is making you believe the smoke and mirrors are a "real world". There wasn't any "corner" to turn.
 
Well cuetique, if with all that money he put into the game it still couldn't work, then there is absolutely no hope for pool at all.

Are you telling me that right up until that fatefull Sunday when the players were not paid it didn't look good? If you are saying that, then you are an out and out fool. Up until then that was the best deal in town. The best production ever. With the most goodies thrown in. Then the self-fullfilling prophecy took over.

Sure it was going to be sustained by qualifiers. What is wrong with that? Money has to come from somewhere. Surely it was not coming out of your pocket. So when people started to criticize the qualifiers, and calling them con games, and convincing players not to play in them, it was obvious that the IPT was doomed when participation in them was minimal.

The pool players of course were playing the odds. Looking for the easy win. Just like when they did business to win $500 on banking the 8. They only were thinking about themselves. Never the future. that is the nature of a pool player. They all want to be hustlers. Even APA 3's.

So why shouldn't KT do what makes the most business sense? And cut his losses.

The KOTH, Vegas and Reno were the best productions that the players ever participated in and they will never see that again. It is over. From now on the top quarter of the players will resume winning small tournaments. And where will their prize money come from? Why from the fools who enter and finish in the bottom 3/4 of the tournament. Pretty soon the fools will wake up and stop being fools and there will be no money at all for pool players.

From now on the players will just play pool for the fun of it, not to make money at it.

Unless of course all you "I told you so's" can explain where the money is going to come from in a professional event.

Pool is just one big con game where the better players suck the money from the weaker players. They do on a daily basis exactly what they are accusing KT of doing.

I suspect that KT is the big loser in this game. He finally realized that it was a hopeless case and decided to renig on his promise. So what? That is no crime. Life is full of broken promises.

From now on when I look at a set of brackets I will try and pick the players that deserve the big "L" imprinted on their forehead. What is really funny is that idiots like Strickland and Sigel were out and out telling the losers that they had no business playing against them. They were cutting their own throats.

I wonder if Buddy Hall puts down the players who have no chance to win but enter the tournament at Planet 9 Ball. I would suspect not. He just smiles his smile and says rack em. But I am sure he is thinking, "rack em sucker".

Jake
 
I'm saying it "looked good" as long as KT wanted you think it looked good. He sold a different business plan than pursued, and many people were on to the discrepancy right off. Sure, you knew that the tour needed to make money, but like any business, you need operating capital to sustain you long enough for your plan to take root. KT "sold" the tour as having two full years of operating capital, and chickened out after one year. Two years is a reasonable timeframe for such an endeavor, one year is straight up dreaming.

He never intended to do anything but set this up for a flash and dash sale. He miscalculated his own marketability, and the overflown payouts would never be recouped in the elusive and shrinking prospect of any sucker buying out the tour. Any buyer would have had to either sustain huge payouts long enough for the tour to get credibility, or would have had to reduce payouts. Either way, Trudeau was never going to be the one living up to his own promises.
 
jjinfla said:
Well cuetique, if with all that money he put into the game it still couldn't work, then there is absolutely no hope for pool at all.

Are you telling me that right up until that fatefull Sunday when the players were not paid it didn't look good? If you are saying that, then you are an out and out fool. Up until then that was the best deal in town. The best production ever. With the most goodies thrown in. Then the self-fullfilling prophecy took over.

Sure it was going to be sustained by qualifiers. What is wrong with that? Money has to come from somewhere. Surely it was not coming out of your pocket. So when people started to criticize the qualifiers, and calling them con games, and convincing players not to play in them, it was obvious that the IPT was doomed when participation in them was minimal.

The pool players of course were playing the odds. Looking for the easy win. Just like when they did business to win $500 on banking the 8. They only were thinking about themselves. Never the future. that is the nature of a pool player. They all want to be hustlers. Even APA 3's.

So why shouldn't KT do what makes the most business sense? And cut his losses.

The KOTH, Vegas and Reno were the best productions that the players ever participated in and they will never see that again. It is over. From now on the top quarter of the players will resume winning small tournaments. And where will their prize money come from? Why from the fools who enter and finish in the bottom 3/4 of the tournament. Pretty soon the fools will wake up and stop being fools and there will be no money at all for pool players.

From now on the players will just play pool for the fun of it, not to make money at it.

Unless of course all you "I told you so's" can explain where the money is going to come from in a professional event.

Pool is just one big con game where the better players suck the money from the weaker players. They do on a daily basis exactly what they are accusing KT of doing.

I suspect that KT is the big loser in this game. He finally realized that it was a hopeless case and decided to renig on his promise. So what? That is no crime. Life is full of broken promises.

From now on when I look at a set of brackets I will try and pick the players that deserve the big "L" imprinted on their forehead. What is really funny is that idiots like Strickland and Sigel were out and out telling the losers that they had no business playing against them. They were cutting their own throats.

I wonder if Buddy Hall puts down the players who have no chance to win but enter the tournament at Planet 9 Ball. I would suspect not. He just smiles his smile and says rack em. But I am sure he is thinking, "rack em sucker".

Jake
Click to expand...

The qualifiers could never sustain a tour like this and anyone who has been around this game for 5 years knows it. It just ain't going to happen. Not at $2000 per shot.

The players stepped up to the plate. They walked the walk. They dressed the part and mostly acted the part. In fact, they were so nervous about this and afraid of being the blame, that, IMO, were almost too tight.

The man {KT} put on a dog and pony show. He said right up front that he would personally fund the program for 2 years well knowing he could not do it.
From the jump pretended to be so concerned about the welfare of the players and how they had been treated in the past. He was going to make a difference in their lives.

Try and paint the Players whatever you wish Jake. They are not losers this time, They are victims of an infantile ego maniac. The Players in this situation trie like hell to hold up their end of the Game Plan. They are still trying.

Be as cynical and condeming as you wish, that is your right. Wish for the ruination of the game all you want. The Game/Sport is here to stay and the level of play continues rise. The Players are no different than in any other sport today. There are good people and there are bad people. That exists in every game and within every company and corporation in this world.
 
If the IPT is finished (and it's certainly looking that way), I think that it did show that large prize pools can be accomplished. I felt from the very beginning that there was too much money proposed in contrast to established prize funds. In other words it was difficult to believe that pool could leap from $20K-$50K major events to $3M-$5M major events. It would have been much more credible if the 1st place prizes would have been in the $50K-$100K range. Of course if it was Trudeau's intention from the beginning to pull a flim-flam, then the higher the stakes, the more money he stood to gain from fraud.

The tragedy is that --for the few promoters who are attempting to gather corporate sponsoship for legitimate events or tours-- those potential sponsors are now going to be much more reluctant than ever before to put up their advertising dollars for pro pool events. As for Trudeau, even if he has broken the law, in the end I suspect he'll find a way to land on all four paws.

Doc
 
The tragedy is that --for the few promoters who are attempting to gather corporate sponsoship for legitimate events or tours-- those potential sponsors are now going to be much more reluctant than ever before to put up their advertising dollars for pro pool events. As for Trudeau, even if he has broken the law, in the end I suspect he'll find a way to land on all four paws.

Doc[/QUOTE]

I think KT and what he's done will have no effect, he did what he did to the pool community not the other way around.
 
the next problem is how do we contact all this info to people without access to the internet.
 
jjinfla said:
Today marks day 50 since the IPT ran out of money.

50 days of speculation and utter helplessness by players and fans.

50 days of asking why? Why did this happen. Why now? Everything looked so good. The players were on a stage and were having fun.

If they only had the money to pay the players for Reno the Chicago event sure would have been a crowning event for pool. That may have let them turn the corner for a prosperous future.

Unfortunately, the money stream just ran out.

Now it is back to $7,000 added tournaments where 1st place may earn the player $2,000. Not much excitement there. No more celebrity status. No more fans. Now is seems that the only real fans that the players had were the IPT staff.

So is it back to business as usual for the players? Will they just go back to showing up for a tournament, play and leave? Or will they start working with TD's to improve their lot. I doubt it. The sad fact is that nobody cares. Not the players. Not the fans. Not the people in the industry. And surely not the general public.

Well, we will just have to go back to watching Allison beat up on all the hopefuls in the WPBA.

Jake
Click to expand...


I don't know about came close. They put on a couple of tournaments and gave away some money, all in almost total obscurity. That little bit of poorly produced crap they managed to get on TV was meaningless. The best that can come out of this in my opinion would be a public scandal played out in the media. It would bring more attention to the sport then anything has in the past. Most people don't even know there is such a thing as professional pool. I would love to see the players being interviewed on CNN and MSNBC talking about the sport and what happened, they didn't do anything wrong. The sport needs a good scandal if for no other reason then to let people know it exists. Remember Tanya Harding?
 
cueticue...<<KT never, ever, ever planned for it to be a long term enterprise --- he planned to hype it up and flip it fast.>>

I agree with everything you said except the above. Your guess is as good as mine but mine is that he felt he could juice up pool to become the next Texas Hold 'Em.
Regards,
Jim
 
This says it all!!!

This describes thing pretty well:
 

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gulfportdoc said:
If the IPT is finished (and it's certainly looking that way), I think that it did show that large prize pools can be accomplished..

Unfortunately,on the contrary,it actaually proved that they can't

The tragedy is that --for the few promoters who are attempting to gather corporate sponsoship for legitimate events or tours-- those potential sponsors are now going to be much more reluctant than ever before to put up their advertising dollars for pro pool events. As for Trudeau, even if he has broken the law, in the end I suspect he'll find a way to land on all four paws.

Itseems that one of the reasons for IPt's failure is that sponsors would not even open their purses for the five star glitzy huge prize fund IPT events so,much as we'd like it to be so, there's little room for serious expectation that they will ever support pool of any nature to any significant degree

Doc
Click to expand...

Sorry Doc,not trying to be argumentative,just a different slant on it,prefer you to be right on this any day :)
 
av84fun said:
cueticue...<<KT never, ever, ever planned for it to be a long term enterprise --- he planned to hype it up and flip it fast.>>

I agree with everything you said except the above. Your guess is as good as mine but mine is that he felt he could juice up pool to become the next Texas Hold 'Em.
Regards,
Jim
Click to expand...
I'd say you're right. Your guess is every bit as plausible as mine -- in fact I'm about 51% my way, and 47% your way, and 2% other. :)
 
gulfportdoc said:
The tragedy is that --for the few promoters who are attempting to gather corporate sponsoship for legitimate events or tours-- those potential sponsors are now going to be much more reluctant than ever before to put up their advertising dollars for pro pool events.
Click to expand...

Now that is the understatement of the year.

Think about it. Sardo wants to sponsor pool so what do pool players do, instead of learning how to use it they condem the hell out of the Sardo rack. How many IPT players all of a sudden thought they were prima donnas and were above playing with a Sardo rack? Well, it's back to bumsville for them.
Prima Donna my ass.

Then there is diamond tables and IPT cloth. Did anyone have anything good to say about them. Nope. Instead of praising the people who will put bread on your table they find fault with them. And don't give me that crap about them just being honest. If so it would be the first time in any of their lives.

IPT balls are the wrong color. Junk chalk. It just goes on and on. How could a sponsor make money if the players just criticize their products?

Don't pool players have any common sense at all? Any business sense?

Good thing I don't run any tournaments because the first time a player would criticize a sponsor he would be out the door never to return. I wouldn't care who he is. He is not putting any money in my pocket and he sure as hell is not going to take any out of it.

Does anyone think the players will ever wake up or will they continue to go walking around with their thumb up their ass.

Jake
 
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cuetique said:
"Everything looked so good". You mean, he made you think it looked good -- which was exactly his intention.
The tour never had a chance, no matter how dreamy-eyed you get about it. It was founded by a blatant and obvious crook. It didn't ever stand a snowball's chance is hell of securing mainstream sponsors because of KT's sullied name, but KT is too narcissistic to ever see that. KT never, ever, ever planned for it to be a long term enterprise --- he planned to hype it up and flip it fast. He ran out of his allocated play money before he found a sucker to buy it. And that brings us to today. The rest, as they say, is history.

A con man's stock in trade is making you believe the smoke and mirrors are a "real world". There wasn't any "corner" to turn.
Click to expand...


Hear hear! Someone not afraid to tell it like it is. This is closer to the truth than most of the IPT "do gooders" could come up with.
 
macguy said:
I don't know about came close. They put on a couple of tournaments and gave away some money, all in almost total obscurity. That little bit of poorly produced crap they managed to get on TV was meaningless. The best that can come out of this in my opinion would be a public scandal played out in the media. It would bring more attention to the sport then anything has in the past. Most people don't even know there is such a thing as professional pool. I would love to see the players being interviewed on CNN and MSNBC talking about the sport and what happened, they didn't do anything wrong. The sport needs a good scandal if for no other reason then to let people know it exists. Remember Tanya Harding?
Click to expand...


Bad as it sounds, I have to agree. I remember when Fats sued Walter Tevis, who wrote The Hustler. He claimed to be the "real" Minnesota Fats. It made front page news across the country. Most do not remember that Fats lost the case, but became forever famous, and continued to use his new name, for great reward.
 
jjinfla said:
Now that is the understatement of the year.

Think about it. Sardo wants to sponsor pool so what do pool players do, instead of learning how to use it they condem the hell out of the Sardo rack. How many IPT players all of a sudden thought they were prima donnas and were above playing with a Sardo rack? Well, it's back to bumsville for them.
Prima Donna my ass.

Then there is diamond tables and IPT cloth. Did anyone have anything good to say about them. Nope. Instead of praising the people who will put bread on your table they find fault with them. And don't give me that crap about them just being honest. If so it would be the first time in any of their lives.

IPT balls are the wrong color. Junk chalk. It just goes on and on. How could a sponsor make money if the players just criticize their products?

Don't pool players have any common sense at all? Any business sense?

Good thing I don't run any tournaments because the first time a player would criticize a sponsor he would be out the door never to return. I wouldn't care who he is. He is not putting any money in my pocket and he sure as hell is not going to take any out of it.

Does anyone think the players will ever wake up or will they continue to go walking around with their thumb up their ass.

Jake
Click to expand...


I don't know what you wanted them to say? At the last players meeting KT said he knew some of the players were not happy with the cloth and he apologized. He then went on to say the cloth was going to pill up and players would just have to pick it off and he knew the balls were going to be rolling off but they would just have to shoot harder so the balls would go in. He made some joke like if they can't do that they weren't professionals of something like that.

The problem is, in the in the very beginning he made such a big deal out of the real money was going to be in licensing products and how the players would all have a share of it in the form of profit sharing. He wanted them to try to get rooms where they play to switch to the IPT cloth, balls and chalk along stocking other products they would be coming out with. When the products started coming out they turned out to be nothing but junk, what did you want the players to do?

Most just said nothing but certainly would not try to get friends to buy the crap, others may have actually tried to offer some input but you know how far that would have went. The thing KT said would be the biggest money maker the licensing, they sabotaged themselves by trying to pawn junk off on the public, this was not the players fault and if there was going to be any money in it where the players would have benefited through the profit sharing, the players were screwed because they brought out UN-Sellable products.

This fish was rotting from the head from the very start. If the players share any kind of responsibility I can't imagine what it could be. They bent of backwards, although I am sure KT would have preferred forwards but that's another story, to have the IPT succeed.
 
The cloth and balls were DIFFERENT, but I would not classify any of it as junk! As far as the tables, they are the epitome of what tables should be...the gold standard for professionals. The rack was so much better than their old model. The chalk is great! All of the equipment was selected for their merit and believed to be the best of the best. I don't think any of the people stringing 6 packs had any problem with it. :rolleyes:
 
If poker can make the jump to the mainstream, so can pool. Just takes the right strategy (the IPT did some things right).
 
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