All is Fair in Love and Poker: Heartland Poker Tour

The Heartland Poker Tour reaches over 100 million households in America and more than 15 million worldwide. With nearly twenty events every year and prize pools in the hundreds of thousands, the tour brings poker to the everyman in casinos around the states, from rural Minnesota to urban New York and Las Vegas.
Todd Anderson was a sales manager for a local television company; Greg Lang owned a small business. They played poker together for a while and, in 2004, Lang suggested creating a television show based on remodeling buildings, similar to “This Old House.” Anderson didn’t think the idea could work - production costs would be too high and neither knew how to get a show on television in the first place.
Their next idea was much more intriguing.
“One thing led to another and we were talking about the World Poker Tour and how great it would be to be on TV and he said, ‘Well, why don’t we produce a poker show?’”
Anderson liked the idea of a poker show better. He went home for the holidays and, while there, was talking to his brother, who doesn’t gamble or play poker. As an experiment, he left the television on a poker show.
“I left it there on purpose for 15 minutes before I turned the channel and he said, ‘Hey, I was watching that.’ And I thought, wow, this is interesting. Here’s a guy who doesn’t even gamble or play poker and he finds this show interesting,” Anderson said. “So when I came back from the holidays, I called Greg and said, you know, you might be on to something here.”
After that, the decision was easy. Anderson quit his job in February of 2005 and, together with Lang, started All In Productions.
“We were both all in. I quit my job, I put my life savings into it. Greg did the same thing,” Anderson said. “We went from the idea to shooting a pilot to shooting an event in June to editing it and getting it on television by October 1.”

It sounds easy now, but Anderson stresses how tough it is to get a company like the Heartland Poker Tour off the ground. “Looking back, it was ridiculous to think we could do that. We just didn’t know what we couldn’t do.”
Anderson and Lang didn’t just want to create a television show, though. They wanted to give people an experience. Because the main event was much cheaper compared to other large events (the World Series of Poker’s Main Event comes with a $10,000 price tag), they could create a poker show for the regular guy and give that same guy the opportunity to win buckets of money.
“We decided we could produce the show and the casinos would be willing to pay us to market, film, and distribute a television show geared toward average, everyday poker players.”
The new company moved quickly. Their first tournament was held in October of 2005, less than a year after they’d thought of the idea.
Heartland Poker Tour’s business plan was unusual as well. Although Anderson talked to several national networks about buying the show, he was laughed out of their offices. Two unknown guys from Fargo with no production experience starting a televised poker tournament?
“We were nobody. We were just two guys with this stupid idea that we could produce a television show and get it on TV,” Anderson said.
The idea was, on the face of it, preposterous. Fortunately, Anderson and Lang found a new, unique way to take their business to the airwaves: they gave it away.
Any station that wanted the show could have it. They could air it for free. The money to support the show came from the casinos hosting the tournaments.
The benefits of this strategy became obvious quickly. By not depending on a single channel, a station could “cancel” their show without a negative impact on their finances. They would simply look for another station to air the tournaments instead.
Their big break came when a large Chicago-area broadcaster picked up the show after seeing the pilot one.
“It was ‘Wow, we just hit a million, five million homes.’ It was pretty exciting back then.” The first episode was broadcast in October of 2005 in a broadcast area covering six million homes.
“We never thought it would get that big,” Anderson said. “Our estimates were quite a bit smaller. At the initial stages of the company, we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if a TV station in Minneapolis, Fargo, and Duluth would pick us up?’”
Because casinos fund the tour, they are able to bring it to many different markets, even rural areas the larger network shows would never touch. Each casino benefits not only from the exposure of simply hosting the large events, but increased revenue from their hotels and games.

A Quality Matter

Still, producing the show was not as easy as that. Poker tournaments were already on the air and they looked good.
“One of the most challenging things to do was to create a TV show that met the threshold that had been established by the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker in terms of quality,” Anderson said. “People knew what to expect when they watched poker on TV.”
In the ‘90s, poker shows didn’t have microphones on players or hole card cameras. Announcers simply guessed at what players had in their hands. Old poker television was, in Anderson’s words, “cheesy.” All of that had to be accounted for in Anderson and Lang’s new show.
“We didn’t have the luxury of creating cheesy television.”
Anderson and Lang’s first show took 300 hours to edit and they were paying by the hour. After that, they decided quickly to move their production in-house. All ten of their current employees come from the Fargo area.
Their three most well-known employees are probably their announcers, Fred Bevill and Chris Hanson, and the roving reporter who brings the winners their cash at each tournament, Katie O’Keefe.
Anderson knew about O’Keefe and, together with Lang, asked her to do the pilot. Her payment? A slice of pizza.
“She had some broadcasting experience with the Minnesota Twins, when they were on the Victory Sports Network,” Anderson said. “We reached out to her and asked her if she’d be willing to do a pilot. We told her we’d be willing to give her a piece of pizza to do the show because we couldn’t afford to pay anybody.”
Fortunately, she accepted and has helped host every event on the tour to this day.
Anderson and Lang also knew about Fred Bevill, a comedian who performed around the country and worked as a local radio announcer. Bevill recommended Chris Hanson, a popular early-morning DJ from Fargo. They did screen tests and Anderson and Lang quickly offered them a similar deal to O’Keefe’s.
“For the first six episodes, I don’t think we paid them a dime,” Anderson said.
He told them if they stuck around, once the show became profitable he’d be able to afford to pay them for their time. Fortunately, both Bevill and Hanson like poker as much as they like paychecks, so they stuck it out and are still announcing new episodes today.

Charitable Plays

The Disabled American Veterans charity helps wounded vets from around the United States. From working with the Veterans Administration down to giving vets a ride to the hospital, DAV has worked tireless for America’s soldiers for decades.
A chance meeting led Anderson to Greg Sauer, the head of the local Fargo chapter.
“We want to increase awareness of what the DAV is,” Anderson said. “It’s a great organization. We’ve been fortunate to partner with them.”
Since last year, a portion of the prize pool from every HPT event is donated to the Disabled American Veterans. The HPT is also organizing a large charity event at Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas for the DAV.

Coming Soon to a Casino Near You

The Heartland Poker Tour’s next big event is at the Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen, Minn. Shooting Star will be the home of all the Minnesota HPT events for the next two years, in fact, an agreement Anderson attributes to Shooting Star’s willingness to support and promote poker players from around the region.
The next event at Shooting Star will run from October 24 to November 1. Qualifiers and satellites will run every day up to 10 a.m. on the first day of the Main Event. The week of qualifiers is important, according to Anderson.
Most players end up getting into the $1,000 buy-in tournament through much cheaper satellite tournaments. For as little as $20, players have a shot at playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For more information about the Heartland Poker Tour and the special events coming up, visit www.heartlandpokertour.com.
The HPT is televised on KVLY (Channel 11) at 1 a.m. on Sunday mornings in the Fargo-Moorhead and Grand Forks-East Grand Forks areas. It is also available on the Dish Network and DirectTV.
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Mahnomen’s Shooting Star Casino: Poker Schedule

Saturday, October 24
9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. - $20 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $60 HPT Vegas Vacation Private Jet Away Tourney.
7 p.m. - $50+10 Super Satellite for HPT Vegas Vacation Private Jet Away Package.
Sunday, October 25
All Day from 9 a.m. - $35 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $130 super qualifier.
All Day from 9 a.m. - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
Monday, October 26
All Day - $35 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $130 super qualifier.
All Day - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
7 p.m. - $110+20 HPT Main Event Super Qualifier. 10% advance to Main Event.
Tuesday, October 27
All Day - $35 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $130 super qualifier.
All Day - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
7 p.m. - $110+20 HPT Main Event Super Qualifier. 10% advance to Main Event.
Wednesday, October 28
All Day - $35 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $130 super qualifier. Last one at 5:30 p.m.
All Day - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
7 p.m. - $110+20 HPT Main Event Super Qualifier. 10% advance to Main Event.
Thursday, October 29
All Day - $35 Single Table Satellites. Top 2 advance to $130 super qualifier. Last one at 5:30 p.m.
All Day - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
7 p.m. - $110+20 HPT Main Event Super Qualifier. 10% advance to Main Event.
Friday, October 30
All Day - $85 Single Table Satellites. Top 3 advance to $250 qualifier.
All Day - $250 Last Chance Single Table Satellites for Main Event. Top 2 advance.
Noon - $220+30 HPT Main Event Qualifier. Top 20% advance.
7 p.m. - $220+30 HPT Main Event Qualifier. Top 20% advance.
Saturday, October 31
All Day - $250 Last Chance Single Table Satellites for Main Event. Top 2 advance.
10 a.m. - $220+30 HPT Main Event Turbo Qualifier. Top 20% advance.
5 p.m. - $1,000+100 HPT Main Event – Day 1
Sunday, November 1
10 a.m. – HPT Main Event – Day 2
Approx. 4 p.m. – Televised Final Table. Watch from the TV studio audience!