Forget about finding Eric Drache's name in the World Series of Poker record books. It's not there but his fingerprints are all over this biggest of all gambling events because of the 14 years he served as its director from 1973 to 1987.
Those were the days, days when no one knew how big the poker business would eventually become. The World Series was held in a small room at the Binion family's Horseshoe Casino during the 1970s. There were maybe a half-dozen tables at any one time. But the number of bodies didn't matter. Who they were made the difference. The event projected a personality that crawled up into the minds of people thousands of miles from the Horseshoe, lighting fanciful images that eventually brought them to Las Vegas and the World Series.
Drache had a lot to do with that. His considerable people skills and ability to stage manage a tournament that had been the creation of Benny Binion and his son Jack made all the difference in the world. The World Series soaked up news media attention all out of proportion to its size.
The 1970s were a period when the World Series was still struggling to make itself seen in a world where gambling and poker were mostly not legal and most WSOP participants had little interest in public relations. Yes, there were exceptions ... people like Benny himself, 1972 main event winner "Amarillo Slim" Preston and "Puggy" Pearson who won the main event the following year.
They understood the lingering appeal of images that pulsed with personality. As did Drache, who would joke that he had turned to poker because his mother had not thought much of his ability as a sports handicapper. Drache always had a story or two to keep the attention of visiting reporters in search of an angle they could easily grasp and turn into a story. It was Drache's contention that the spotlight should remain focused on tournament action rather than the side games that were so important to many of the tournament participants.
"The World Series is the beginning and end of the fiscal year for the serious poker players stopping by each year," Drache told me. The idea was to build and maintain an event that would generate returns (publicity) for the Horseshoe throughout the year.
It was the spring of 1973 when Drache, a recent arrival from New Jersey, made his first visit to the World Series. He knew little about it except that there was supposed to be a seven-card stud event and stud was his game.
"I got there not having any idea how many people would be playing. For all I knew there might be hundreds, maybe thousands."
Drache asked around about where it was, when it might start, and was told the stud championship had been postponed.
He was stunned. How could this be?
Turned out that Johnny Moss played late the night before and was upstairs still asleep. The stud event would be rescheduled when Moss was up and ready to go. There were not hundreds or thousands showing up to play. The entry total was closer to eight or nine and absolutely nothing would begin without the presence of the late Moss who was very much a poker legend in his own time.
What Drache saw at his first World Series was a lack of organization, a need for direction, a better way of doing things. He fell into some discussions with Jack Binion over several days. Binion took it all in, heaved a sigh and finally said to Drache, "Look, if you think you can do better, why don't you run it."
And that was it ... how Drache came to run the World Series of Poker. There were no tentative proposals passed back and forth, no lawyers running up their billable hours. They were the years before anyone knew what an Internet was, before the Internet fueled a poker boom, before tiny cameras imbedded in tables and a lot of slick marketing turned the World Series into a genuine growth brand with global appeal.
One of Drache's ideas that continues to drive World Series-related numbers higher each year is the concept of satellite tournaments.
The way this happened: Circa 1979 or 1980 Drache was thinking about how to attract more paid entries to the main event with its $10,000 buy-in. On the day when it all came to him he had walked over to one of the World Series tables where a side game was in progress, look at what was going on and asked the players if any one of them had his $10,000 entry fee?
There were mixed responses. Drache looked again and saw that each of the players had about a thousand dollars in front of him. What you ought to do, he told them is play a $1,000 freeze-out with the winner getting a fully paid entry into the no limit hold'em final event.
They tossed the idea around. Some of the players said no thanks and left, but others were found to create what became the first 10-player main event satellite.
"As time went by," Drache says," We began expanding the idea to increase entries in other events."
It was 1983 when Tom McEvoy became the first main event participant to win his seat in a satellite and turn that opportunity into first place and about $540,000 in first place prize money. Close to half of the roughly 6,800 playing in last year's main event are estimated to have won their seats in satellites, either in-house or online.
Drache rarely played in any of the major tournaments over the years but has been a frequent participant in cash games involving many of the best-known names in the world of poker.
And he's always been among the first to tell jokes on himself, accounts of his struggles to borrow the money that kept him in action, a situation that seldom kept him from traveling first class. He confirmed the story of another gambler who told of getting on a plane and heading for a seat in the coach section but being surprised to see Drache sitting in first class.
"What are you doing up here?"
"Who am I going to borrow money from sitting in coach?" was Drache's response, giving it a smile that seemed to say, "You think I don't know what I'm doing."
The way Drache explained that story to me: "Someone with money who was sitting in coach was not likely to be lending it, or maybe he's in coach because he doesn't have anything to lend."
Recent years have been good to Drache. He plays less poker as he leans more heavily on his ability to develop relationships that have made a difference.
He's brought his skills to a company that created a half-dozen or more of the best-known television poker shows, including NBC's Poker After Dark and the National Heads-Up Championship on the same network. Drache is the exclusive consultant to a production company headed by Las Vegan Morie Eskandani who remembers meeting Drache for the first time at the Golden Nugget.
Their collaboration has resulted in another show that's in the works for NBC, something called Face the Ace, which will give people who have qualified on FultTilt.net a chance to come to Las Vegas and play a series of well-known poker personalities for as much as $1 million. It's due to debut in August.
Drache made a recent rare trip to the final table in a major poker tournament, taking second place and $231,000 in prize money in the $10,000 buy-in seven card stud championship at this year's World Series of Poker.
My question to Drache: "Are you going to play again?"
"Probably," he said.
"Which event?" Me thinking that with this kind of money in his pocket, he'd probably be busy the rest of the World Series.
"The same event next year," he shrugged.
He saw my surprise and explained, "I don't play in a lot of these things. Check the record. It's been a long time."
His last World Series event was 1981, the seven card stud championship during a year when the buy-in was only $5,000. He also finished second that year earning $30,000 in prize money.
Poker Player is pleased to welcome Phil Hevener back to its pages. Hevener was the Managing Editor of Poker Player from July 1983 to December 1985. Phil wanted to produce his own publication, which he did with Larry Hall. They called it, "Las Vegas Style." A popular journalist who writes for many major publications, Phil was replaced in 1985 by Gary Thompson, who is now the spokesman for Harrahs Entertainment.
