by Lou Krieger
Each year the world’s best poker players and myriad pretenders converge in Las Vegas to compete in the World Series of Poker. The series used to be held downtown, at Binion’s Horseshoe in “Glitter Gulch,” but ever since Harrah’s purchased the WSOP and moved it to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino just off the Strip, its growth, success, and popularity over the past half-decade has been almost unimaginable. The Rio’s big draw is its convention center, which is large enough to hold more poker players than you could ever imagine convening in one place, if you haven’t yet seen and experienced it for yourself.>
Comprised of more than 50 separate events each costing between $1,500 and $10,000 to enter, plus the recent addition of a $50,000 buy-in “player’s championship,” anyone with the buy-in is welcome to enter, and that’s one of the WSOP’s big draws. You can’t play golf in a PGA tournament, won’t be able to take a few swings against a big league pitcher, will never be able to return Rafael Nadal’s serve, go one-onone with Lebron James, or get in the ring with one of the Klitschko brothers. But you can compete against the best poker players on this planet… the same guys you’ve seen play on TV. All you need is the buy-in, the smarts, the guts, a little bit of luck, and you even might win.
Popularized in part by the World Series of Poker, Texas hold’em was always the game of choice for southern road gamblers. Because of its popularity on television, Texas hold’em is favored by most poker players, although many European players still favor pot-limit Omaha. Part of hold’em’s popularity is that it’s faster than stud and Omaha, has more action, and there’s no need to rack your brain memorizing exposed cards and folded hands. Not only that, it’s easy to learn and explain, which makes it perfect for television.
Each entrant at the World Series main event starts with $10,000 in tournament chips and can bet any amount at any time. Imagine yourself in a no-limit game. You might bet $100 only to confront a raiser who pushes his entire stack of chips toward the center of the table. If his chip count is equal to yours or greater, you must move all-in to call or else you’ll have to fold your hand, thus relinquishing any claim to the pot. It’s a daunting decision. If you call and lose it’s all over until next year. No-limit hold’em is both a game of cat and mouse with each player trying to trap an opponent for all his chips, as well as a game of well-timed bluffs and aggression.
Suppose the pot contains $500 and your opponent bets $2,000. What does that mean? Does he have the goods or is he bluffing? Does he have an unbeatable hand and is betting in hopes that yours is almost as good? Or is it a naked bluff? Certainty is a rare commodity in no-limit hold’em—and that’s why the great hold’em players all tell you that heart is at least as important as knowing the odds and working the numbers. In no-limit everyone tries to steal—you really can’t win in the long run if you don’t—but the best pull it off adroitly. The mediocre are routinely caught—snapped off, as they say at the table—and left to stagger away talking to themselves.
With a player’s entire stack of chips always at risk, every one of the nine remaining players who will play off in November to determine a champion may have made a mistake or two over the course of the tournament, but either got lucky and drew out on their opponents, or, more likely, outplayed them at critical junctures. The November Nine, as they’re called, are the toughest, smartest, and luckiest of all the players who each ponied-up $10,000 buy-in earlier in the summer, and their hopes of winning poker’s most celebrated event are still alive. The World Series of Poker began in 1970 as a small gathering of top poker professionals invited to the Horseshoe by Benny Binion to play a few friendly games of poker at very high stakes. When the dust cleared, the assemblage cast votes for the player to be named world’s champion. Johnny Moss, who passed away in 1996 and was still a competitive force among poker players in his 89th year, was chosen. Moss was a fitting choice. Moss and his old friend, the late and legendary Benny Binion, can take most of the credit for popularizing poker in Las Vegas.
took a cab to Binion’s Horseshoe, and sat down to a friendly game with Nick the Greek.
Binion positioned the table near the casino’s entrance, and the crowds— intrigued by the biggest game the town had ever seen—stood five and six deep to watch. The confrontation between Moss and Dandolos lasted five months, punctuated by breaks for sleep every four days. In the end Nick the Greek, who according to legend, had broken all the gamblers on the East Coast including mobster Arnold Rothstein, stood up from the table, smiled and said, “Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.” Over that five month period Johnny Moss had beaten Nick Dandolos for more than $2 million.
In 1970 Benny Binion decided to recapture that magic by inviting the top professionals to play in public. Five games were played at the inaugural World Series of Poker. Johnny Moss won them all. He won again in 1971, and when he captured the title a third time in 1974, the legend of Johnny Moss and the World Series of Poker were forever linked. Since it’s relatively modest beginnings, the World Series of Poker has grown exponentially. From five events in 1970, it’s grown to a 58-event tournament. This year’s grand finale, the ten-thousand dollar buy-in, no-limit hold’em tournament attracted 6,865 participants, creating a prize pool of $64,531,000 in the process. The winner’s share is a cool $8,711,956—with the remainder of the prize money distributed to the top 693 finishers according to their order of finish. That’s just slightly below last year’s main event, which attracted 7,319 runners and Jonathan Duhamel, of Boucherville, Quebec, Canada—the first Canadian to win poker’s most prestigious event—took home $8,944,600 for his first-place finish.
Just how big has the World Series become? From a small, invitational event where the world champion was decided by a vote of the players in attendance, it’s grown to a tournament of staggering proportions and is poker’s premier event—not just in the United States, but all over the world. The internationalization of poker has become overwhelmingly apparent as many events have been won by foreignborn players.
If the World Series grew by leaps and bounds so had Binion’s, until the event finally outgrew the space available to it and moved to the Rio, which has a mammoth convention center that annually—and temporarily— each summer is converted to the world’s largest poker room.
When gaming expanded to Atlantic City, Connecticut, Mississippi, and other parts of the country, Las Vegas kept ahead of the curve by continuing to reinvent itself—and the World Series of Poker was no exception. The tournament’s early years were restrictive, since one had to be a high roller to enter. Democratization came in the eighties with the advent of satellites.
These mini-tournaments gave everyone an opportunity to compete in big buy-in events. Not only is it possible to parlay a $220 satellite entry fee into victory in the main event, it’s a frequent occurrence. In fact, when Tom McEvoy defeated Rod Peate for the title in 1983, it marked the first time two players parlayed satellite victories into a shot at the championship. “It’s like taking a toothpick,” said 1972 champ Amarillo Slim Preston, “and running it into a lumber yard.”
But the tournament events are not the entire story: non-stop side games exude high energy and big money. Betting limits of $400-$800 are common, and stakes are often higher than that. Surrounded by green felt, cards, and the clacking of chips riffled through the fingers of thousands of players, you realize that this is poker’s equivalent of a feeding frenzy: games ‘round the clock, contestants playing at double and triple their usual stakes, and top pros from all over the world competing against each other in Las Vegas’ biggest games. After all, when you’re a professional poker player who’s been knocked out of today’s tournament event, what are you going to do until tomorrow? Play poker. What else? This year’s tournament exploded out of the starting gate with 128 entrants each paying $25,000 to enter the richest heads-up poker tournament in history. The winner, Jake Cody, from Rochdale, England, earned a whopping $851,192 in firstplace prize money. Cody was also presented with the ultimate symbol of achievement in the game of poker, the WSOP gold bracelet. It was his first WSOP victory. The final heads-up match between Cody and runnerup Yevgeniy Timoshenko proved to be a thrilling surprise, ensuring a first-time WSOP champion. In both semi-final matches, each of the two finalists defeated former WSOP gold bracelet winners. Timoshenko defeated two-time former WSOP champion Eric Froehlich, who is widely considered to be one of the game’s best all around players, in a match lasting nearly three hours. Then Cody busted jetsetting superstar Gus Hansen in a match that was unquestionably one of the highlights of this year’s WSOP. Encouraged by a rowdy band of mostly British supporters, Cody annihilated Hansen in a two hour duel. The outcome was a stinging defeat for Hansen, who up to that point had won a record 12 consecutive heads-up matches in WSOP competition.
Even smaller WSOP events, like the threeday long Ladies No-Limit Hold’em World Championship, drew a crowd, with 1,055 entrants. By the time the final table was reached, the gallery of spectators was packed 10-12 deep around the rail. No one could remember a larger crowd of spectators ever assembled before for any ladies event. In the end, Marsha Wolak defeated Karina Jett and collected $192,344 in prize money for first place, but winning the gold bracelet was all that seemed to matter from her reaction.
But it’s the main event that draws the crowds every year, especially since Chris Moneymaker and the coming of the online players in 2003 brought scads of 20-something players into poker, and into the WSOP. They came with new attitudes, new skills, new strategies, and because most of these players developed their chops online—where it’s easy to play eight or 16 tables simultaneously in games where 100 hands per hour are commonplace— many of these newcomers played more hands in three to five years of play than some of the experienced old hands had in a lifetime.
A complete unknown playing in his first live tournament, Moneymaker was an accountant who won a seat into the main event of the 2003 World Series of Poker through a $39 satellite at PokerStars online poker card room. He went on to win the first prize of $2.5 million, and became not only a poker superstar, but the icon for an entirely new generation of poker players in his first live poker tournament. When heads-up against Sammy Farha, he bluffed all-in with king-high, causing Farha to fold a pair of nines, which changed the momentum of the match. Moneymaker won it all when he made a full house with 5d-4s, beating Farha’s Jh-Td or a board of Js-5s- 4c-8d-5h. The life changing victory marked the end for Moneymaker’s day job as an accountant. He quit to become a spokesperson for Harrah’s entertainment as well as PokerStars.
Next issue we’ll recap more of the 2011 WSOP for you.
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