Learn to beat the pros, from the pros. That’s what some are doing at the WSOP Poker Academy and the WPT Boot Camp. Both offer similar criteria and are held at different cities through out the year.  They are basically two or three day poker sleep away camps were the WSOP welcomes around 200 amateur players to help improve their game and get advice from the pros. The WPT offers their camp to about 60 players at a time.
With the popularity of poker, these two camps have become a hot ticket to get. Since January they have offered almost 40 camps between them with nearly all of them sold out.
With tuitions ranging from $1,695 to $4,300 the camps are not cheap. According to the WSOP Chairman Jeffrey Pollack, for poker players who are serious enough about their game, the money for these schools should be considered an investment in their future.
For players wanting to play in $5,000 – $10,000 but in tournaments Pollack said that “a couple thousand dollars for valuable instruction is almost like an insurance policy.â€
“The truth is that we can’t set these things up fast enough,†he added.
For some amateurs, the experience has been more than an insurance policy, it has paid dividends almost immediately.
Like Reston, Va. native Lee Childs. He paid $1,500 for a WPT Camp and then turned around and finished seventh in the WSOP Main Event for a pay out of $705,229.Â
When asked about the tuition, Childs said “I’d say it was money well spent. I knew how to play poker going in, but hearing these professionals teach discipline got me out of a bunch of hands in the tournament that I probably would have played if I hadn’t just been reminded to stay away from them.â€