BY TOM SOMACH

A tournament for deaf poker players that was to award the top finishers seats at the next World Series of Poker (WSOP) will not be sending anyone to the prestigious Las Vegas event after all.

Bad weather last Sunday in the Chicago area, where the deaf poker tourney was held, reduced the number of tourney participants, which in turn reduced the amount of prize money, said Jim Kasputis, one of the event organizers.

The reduced prize pool was not enough to cover the cost of two entry fees for the 2007 WSOP at the Rio casino in Las Vegas, which had been promised to the winner and runnerup of the deaf tourney, Kasputis said.

“We had a blizzard the day of the event,” Kasputis told PokerHelper.com in a telephone interview Monday. “We had about 60 deaf people registered to play in the deaf poker tournament, but because of the bad weather, only 35 showed up.

“With only about half the number of expected participants making it to the tournament, we didn’t make enough from our registration fees to cover the cost of two or even one entry into the next WSOP,” Kasputis said. “So we just awarded cash prizes in the deaf tournament.”

When the deaf tournament was publicized earlier this month, the top two finishers were promised seats at the WSOP plus travel expenses.

Those seats as prizes, however, were contingent on the deaf tourney drawing a full field of players, Kasputis said.

The registration fee for the deaf tournament was $65 a person, he said.

The two WSOP seats which were to have been awarded as prizes were not for the main WSOP event, which has a $10,000 entry fee, but for a lesser WSOP event, which still has an entry fee in excess of $1,000, he said.

Participants in the deaf poker tournament used sign language to communicate during play, and there were even deaf dealers, Kasputis said.

The deaf tourney was part of a fund-raiser for the West Suburban Association of the Deaf (WSAD), a Chicago-area charity whose website is www.wsad.org.

Helping run the event was the Rockford Charitable Games Association (RCGA), of Rockford, Ill., whose website is www.rockfordcharitablegames.com.

The event was held at Hanging Gardens Banquets, a hall in River Grove, Ill., just outside Chicago.

“We are planning another deaf poker tournament in May,” said Kasputis, who’s with the RCGA and has played in the WSOP.

“With better weather then, we’ll have a full tournament and finally be able to award those two WSOP seats as prizes,” he said.