Poker Stories Podcast: World Poker Tour President and CEO Adam Pliska

Poker Stories is a long-form audio podcast series featuring casual interviews with some of the best players and personalities in the game. Each episode highlights a well-known member of the poker world and delves into their favorite stories both on and off the table.

Adam Pliska has been with the Poker World Tour since the beginning, and together with the company recently celebrated 20 years in the game. The WPT President and CEO he acted as the tour’s general counsel for several years before moving to the executive side. Under his leadership, the tour has since grown to a truly global scale and recently hosted a record-breaking $29 million in prize money. WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas.

Before Pliska took the helm a WPT, worked in television production. The USC A film school graduate has even helped launch programs like Baywatch, Win Ben Stein’s moneyand a reboot of Lassie. Eventually he decided to go back to law school, graduating from UC Berkeley. He was ready to take a job on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Intellectual Property Law when his good friend Steve Lipscomb called him with an offer for a brand new television poker show that had yet to secure distribution. Pliska has decided to bet on the start-up, and the rest is history.

Highlights of this interview include fake press credentials for Hollywood access, focus on TV production, Leonardo DiCaprio and the collie, following a girl to law school, battling the Washington DC cold, gambling on a start -up of poker, become Disney of poker, how the tour makes money, putting the world into it Poker World Tourpivoting during a pandemic, like renting a horse, getting a frozen pie in the face from Steve Aoki, learning to play the cello, hating the 4 a.m. paper trail, betting against Antonio Esfandiari’s charisma, looking like Obama, a Maleficent’s job offer, in final table work and death-defying sailboat races with Richard Branson.

Catch up on past episodes with famous people like Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Patrik Antonius, Justin Bonomo, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Galfond, Nick Schulman, Fedor Holz, Barry Greenstein, Dan Smith, Scotty Nguyen, Mike Sexton, Maria Ho, Brad Owen and many others. If you like what you hear, make sure you sign up to automatically get the latest episodes when they are released.

*Photo copyright WPT