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At this year’s World Series of Poker, a new feature was unveiled, with the superimposed pictures of past champions covering the walls of the Amazon Room and the RIO All-Suites Hotel and Casino. It was a pleasure to see the past remembered, at least for those of us who know that past.
Games like baseball and football celebrate their histories. Fans remember who won the baseball World Series in 1961 (the New York Yankees) or the NFL’s inaugural Super Bowl (The Green Bay Packers), but the champions of poker’s biggest event seem to have been lost to the sands of time. With that in mind, it seems like a good idea to take a look back and remember those who came before us. Without them, really, there is no “us.” Here’s a brief look at each of the first thirty-eight World Series of Poker and how they played out:
1970 – Seven men — Hall of Famers Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Sailor Roberts, Amarillo Slim, Puggy Pearson. And Crandell Addington, along with the faded-into-history Carl Cannon — gathered at Binion’s Horseshoe for cash game poker, since the freezeout hadn’t been created yet.
When it was all over, Jack Binion asked the players to vote for a champion. When the result came back in a seven-way tie, Jack asked the players to vote again, this time for someone other than themselves. The only player who didn’t vote for Johnny Moss in the second vote was Moss himself. The man they called “the Grand old Man of the Game” was the inaugural champion.
1971 - After the 1970 edition, LA Times journalist Ted Thackery told Jack the WSOP needed a clearer winner. Popular gossip tells us that it was Puggy Pearson who came up with the idea of the freezeout, thus giving birth to tournament poker. There would be no more votes.
Moss didn’t need an election. Now sixty-six years old, he took down his second consecutive title, defeating Pearson in a final that would be reenacted in 1973. There was little doubt that at this point he was the best player in the world, but former traveling mates Brunson, Slim, and Roberts were closing the gap.
1972 - This was, perhaps, the second-most important WSOP victory to poker’s growth. Amarillo Slim, half conman, half gambler, all charm, took the title. Thing was, he was the only guy who wanted it.
Slim’s victory was assured when the event got down to three players. As a devout Christian, Doyle didn’t want the stigma of carrying a dubious title like “World Champion of Poker,” while Puggy didn’t want the stigma of “World Champion of Poker” as a devout tax evader; so a deal was struck and Slim won in the end. Little did Doyle or Puggy know what they’d passed up: Slim parlayed the victory into numerous talk show appearances and a measure of international celebrity. In doing so, he popularized the game, lending mightily to the growth of the WSOP.
1973 - Having watched Slim benefit from his win left Puggy wanting for what could have been a, desire that propelled him to the title in 1973. Puggy was dominant In defeating the sixty-eight year old Moss to take the title and a measure of revenge for 1971. Then, he waited for the talk shows to call.
The calls never came, Puggy, a character in his own right, wasn’t possessed of Slims natural charisma. He never got the shows or the glory he thought he had coming to him. Worse still, his decision to give Slim the ‘72 win cost him a spot next to Moss, Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Stu Ungar as the only players to win multiple Main Events.
1974 - For two years in a row, Johnny Moss had been forced to watch other players wear his crown, a situation he rectified in 1974. Moss steamrolled the competition, defeating “Dandy” Crandell Addington in the final.
Addington, who’d eventually be elected to the Binion’s Poker Hall of Fame in 2005, was the first player to truly desire the world championship in a way that transcended mere money. A wealthy man due to strong poker play and investment savvy, the title meant everything to the former rounder. Sadly, he’d never claim it. He’d eventually become the first player (eventually joined by TJ Cloutier and Dewey Tomko) to lose in the finals twice and never win the Big One. That’s getting ahead of ourselves, though.
1975 - Doyle Brunson calls Sailor Roberts the best friend he ever had and the best player he ever saw. The two, along with Slim, traveled the dusty trails of Texas and surrounding states throughout the sixties, surviving more than a few scrapes while taking down more than a few big scores.
Roberts’ greatest WSOP moment came in 1975, when he defeated Bob Hooks to take the title. A man who lived life large, the money didn’t last long. Roberts would continue to play in the WSOP until 1982, before finally becoming poker’s first big-name drug fatality. As much as anything, it was his passing that fueled Doyle’s personal crusade against drugs. It should be noted here that Roberts’ win here was the first to be rewarded with a gold bracelet.
1976 - With Johnny Moss hitting seventy, the old man was starting to slow down and the baton was being passed. The recipient of course, was dubbed “Texas Dolly” when NBC’s Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder mispronounced Doyle Brunson’s name.
Doyle’s opponent in the finals was Texan pro Jesse Alto, known for tight play and the fiercest temper ever seen at the poker table. Of course, we all know now that Alto’s run to the title was ended by the unlikeliest of hands: 10-2. That’s only half of that story…
1977 - The other half came a year later. Brunson, now firmly planted at the top of the poker mountain, came ready to defend his title. There was no doubt now that he was the best player in the world, and all that was left was for him to prove it again. He did with his second world championship title.
Doyle defeated Gary “Bones” Berland in the end. Berland, so-called for his skeletal frame, would become another fatality of the eighties’ drug craze; but before he did, he’d score an amazing five bracelets in the years 1977-1979. Still, he couldn’t stop Doyle, who won for the second straight year with 10-2 hitting a full house on the river.
1978 - Until 1978, all signs suggested that poker was an experienced man’s game, but Bobby Baldwin changed all that. “The Owl,” a young Oklahoman, had bridged the gap between him and his more experienced peers through intensive study and mathematical comprehension. He was just twenty-eight years old.
Baldwin defeated Crandell Addington in the final. In an attempt to make the product more enticing for ESPN cameras, Addington was presented to the audience as a wealthy amateur to Baldwin’s youthful pro. The end came for Crandell when he flopped a set of nines only to have Baldwin flop a set of queens. The affable Addington would never make the final table again.
1979 - Baldwin heralded the youth movement; Hal Fowler led the charge of amateurs. The first nine WSOPs saw seasoned, full-time professionals take the title, but Hal Fowler was about as amateur as they come. Fortunately, he was also on the hottest streak ever seen at the Series to that time.
Fowler faced Bobby “The Wizard” Hoff in the final, taking the title by calling off a third of his stack on a gutshot straight draw. The “gamble” paid off, with Hal hitting his four-outer on the turn. For Hoff, it was a crushing blow; it led to a prolonged depression for a man widely considered to be one of the greatest No Limit Hold’em players in the world.
1980 - When Stu Ungar arrived at the 1980 World Series of Poker, he was the literal long shot; bookmakers had odds down on every player in the tournament, and the twenty-six-year-old’s were the longest. A bridge savant, the kid they called “The Kid” had played in one poker tournament prior to this one. It’s safe to say he learned a lot during the course of the five-day event.
Ungar faced Doyle Brunson in the final. Brunson would say later that if anyone had taken Stuey out on Day 1, he couldn’t have lost the event. “I’ve never seen anyone get better each day of an event, but you could see it with Stuey.” In the end, Ungar not only won the tournament, but a $50,000 side bet with Doyle made just before their heads-up battle.
1981 - No longer the long shot, Stuey still wasn’t rated amongst the favorites; but he wasn’t to be stopped. Now fully immersed in poker, Ungar came into the 1981 event far more prepared than in the previous year. The result, however, was the same.
Gabe Kaplan was the beneficiary of the Ungar win, winning a big “Texans versus Jews” wager with Amarillo Slim. There were three each at the start of The final table, but the Texans were gone when it was down to two. It was Alaskan fur trader Perry Green who had the honor of losing to Ungar this time around.
1982 - Of the characters that have braced the World Series none was more colorful than Jack Straus. It was no shock then, that “Treetop” won the 82 series with flair. This was the year in which the phrase “chip and a chair” was coined.
Straus moved his stack to the middle on Day 1 and lost the pot, but as he collected his things, he found a lone 500 chip sitting underneath his cocktail napkin. Since the words “all in” hadn’t been uttered, he was allowed to keep it. He doubled up in each of the next two hands, and the rest is history.
1983 - Eric Drache was the man who introduced the satellite concept to the World Series of Poker, and Tom McEvoy was its first champion. The many-times-over poker author won a satellite to qualify for the Big One in 1983, then became the first player to win the Main Event after said qualification.
McEvoy defeated fellow satellite qualifier Rod Peate in the final after the omni-present Brunson was dispatched in third. In his post-game comments, the Michigan-born McEvoy told the world, “I’m glad to say it was me and Rod and not Doyle Brunson or anyone from Texas. I don’t have anything against Texans, but they think they’re the best in the world.” The Series was expanding its horizons.
1984 - “Gentleman” Jack Keller won the event this year almost by default. With three players left, “Cowboy” Wolford bluffed out monster chip leader Jesse Alto and showed his hand after collecting the pot. Alto, feeling betrayed, fell victim to that aforementioned temper; he moved all in without so much as looking at his cards in each of the next three hands. Keller took his stack in the duration.
From 1975-1986, Alto made the final table of the Main Event an amazing six times, but never captured the elusive title. Wolford’s bluff was considered by many to be the most crucial in Series history until Chris Moneymaker’s against Sammy Farha in 2003.
1985 - In a battle of big Texan road gamblers, Bill Smith defeated TJ Cloutier, who was appearing at his first Main Event final table. It was said of Smith that when he was sober he played too tight, when drunk, he played too loose, and when he had a light buzz, he was the best player in the world.
“When Bill started announcing the flop,” TJ remembers, “you knew he was done. Until that though, he was one of the best I ever saw.” Wolford remembered Smith in saying, “If it weren’t for the alcohol, he probably would have three or four world championships instead just one.”
1986 - A stark contrast to the previous year’s champion, Berry Johnston is a quiet man who never seems fazed by goings-on at the table. When he got knocked out third on a brutal beat in 1985, his wife asked almost immediately, “Honey, I’m hungry. Can we go get something to eat now?” Despite the events that would have made others explode at that moment, the unfazable Johnston replied, “Okay, honey. We’ll go eat if that’s what you want to do.” When he won a year later, he told the assembled the title was more important to him than the money. No one doubted the truth of the statement.
1987 - It’s doubtful many players could tell you who won the Series from 1982-1986 off the top of their heads, but Johnny Chan’s victory in 1987 was the beginning of the greatest run in WSOP history. Chan defeated Frank Henderson in the final of the title that’s now remembered as a precursor to his win in 1988 when...
1988 - … Chan defeated Erik Seidel in perhaps the most memorable final prior to the poker boom. Not only did Chan manage to wait Seidel out by getting the young New Yorker to push his chips into the middle after Johnny had flopped a straight, but the event was recorded for posterity and replayed in Rounders, the Matt Damon/Ed Norton vehicle generation of gamblers take to the tables. To this day, Chan carries an aura that might be unmatched.
1989 - With two consecutive titles to his name, Chan was massive a favorite entering the 1989 edition, and he didn’t disappoint. For the third consecutive year, he made it to the final table, and he once again made it to heads-up play. This time though, he lost, ending his reign and simultaneously giving birth to an era.
Chan’s loss came at the hands of a 24-yearold, brash, cocky, confident, headphone wearing, acne-faced mid-western kid. It was said the kid arrived at Binion’s on a skateboard and left with the world title. On the final hand, the kid outplayed Chan, getting Johnny to put his chips into the pot pre-fl op with As-7s to the kid’s pocket nines. The kid’s name? Phil Hellmuth. He’s won a few tournaments since then, too.
This would be Benny Binion’s last WSOP. The event’s patriarch passed away on Christmas Day, 1989.
1990 - As told in this month’s “Wise Hand of the Month” (Pg. 26), the worst beat in the history of the World Series of Poker came in the heads-up portion of the 1990 WSOP. There, Hans “Tuna” Lund, an immensely popular out on Mansour Matloubi, to have the London-based Matloubi hit his two-outer on the river. The championship was in the balance, with Matloubi doubling and taking the lead.
The television broadcast of the event showed Mansour winning on the hand after the beat but, in reality, there were seven hours of play in between, which Tuna managed draw back to even. Finally though, Mansour outlasted opponent. The crippling loss still haunts the gentle giant Lund to this day.
1991 - While it didn’t quite heal the wound, Lund gained some measure of equilibrium the following year. It wasn’t Lund, but friend Brad Daugherty who took down the title in 1991. Daugherty, who defeated Don Holt in the final of an event that saw most of the big names knocked out early, still plays in the Main Event today. Daugherty’s win Was the first in the event’s history to be rewarded with a $1,000,000 first prize.
1992 - For the first of two times in the event’s history, attendance in the WSOP Main Event dropped. Only 201 players put up the $10,000, down fourteen from the previous year’s 215. The second drop would come fifteen years later, with the bar set slightly higher than this time around.
Hamid Dastmalchi, a chain-smoking, high-gambling pro emerged victorious in a year that saw former champions Johnny Chan and Jack Keller narrowly miss the final table. Once again, Tuna Lund got close but no cigar, finishing third before Dastmalchi could take down Tom Jacobs in the final.
1993 - This Main Event is best remembered for what’s been called “Bonetti’s Blunder.” Facing down fellow monster stack Jim Bechtel with three players left, John Bonetti made what many feel was a reckless play, moving all in with his stack dwarfing the blinds on an ace-high flop. His A-K in hand was good, but Bechtel’s flopped set was better. Bonetti went out in third.
No one was happier about the turn of events than Glen Cozen. The California dentist had been employing a tighter-than-tight strategy designed solely to move him up in the standings, and when the big hand came down, he barely had 5% of the chips in play. He lost to Bechtel soon after, but it’s unlikely he minded too much. He won an extra quarter-million dollars when Bonetti was eliminated.
1994 - On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Series, Jack Binion declared that in addition to the $1 million first prize, the champion would win his weight in silver. What he didn’t count on was then- 337 pound Russ Hamilton taking the title, defeating a seemingly indifferent Hugh Vincent in the final.
Hamilton reportedly went to the weigh-in gorged on high-density food and with pockets full of nickels, hoping to increase his payoff on Jack’s generosity. They confiscated the nickels, but the rest of the weight was accounted for.
1995 - Dan Harrington played in satellites for two events in the 1995 World Series, qualifying both times then winning both events. The first was a $2,500 No Limit Hold’em event; the second was the world championship.
Harrington defeated Canadian Howard Goldfarb to win at a final table where the focus was on neither. Instead, the spotlight fell on Barbara Enright, the first woman to make the final table of the big one. Thus far, she’s still the only woman to have accomplished the feat, at least on American soil. Enright was inducted to the Poker Hall of Fame at this year’s WSOP.
This would be Johnny Moss’s final WSOP. The Grand Old Man of the game passed away that December at the age of 88.
1996 - Huck Seed is known for his prop-betting prowess as much as for his poker nowadays, but once upon a time, he was seen as the boy-wonder heir apparent to poker’s royalty. Seed, who’d backed Brad Daugherty’s run to the title in 1991, won the crown for himself fi ve years later at just twenty-eight years old. He was and still is the second-youngest player to take the title.
Seed outlasted a strong fi nal table including John Bonetti (3rd), Men “The Master” Nguyen (4th), and An “The Boss” Tran (5th), before going heads up with doctor Bruce Van Horn. To date, this was the last WSOP Main Event not to be captured on film.
1997 - It was the most remarkable comeback in poker history. Ravaged by two decades of drug abuse, Stu Ungar had been left for dead by most, a development that saddened the community as much or more than it did Stu. His nose eroded from cocaine abuse, his always-tiny body withered and emaciated, The Kid came out of nowhere to dominate the field so thoroughly that when the final table began, the only question being asked was who would finish second.
After his victory, Stu sat down with commentator Gabe Kaplan. He apologized to the people he’d hurt, primarily his daughter, and promised to clean up his act. A year later, back on the drugs, he couldn’t bring himself to make his way to the Series from his hotel room in Binion’s. Eighteen months after his third victory, Ungar passed away from an overdose. The poker community had lost its prodigal little brother.
1998 - As disappointing as Ungar’s absence was, Scotty Nguyen’s triumph in 1998 offered a lesson in dream fulfillment and inspiration. An immigrant who’d arrived in America penniless, Scotty eventually found a job as a dealer, learned the game from the safest seat in the house, then switched chairs and became one of the most successful players in WSOP history.
Scotty’s final opponent was Kevin McBride, an amateur who seemed resolute in his belief he had just as good a chance at victory as anyone else at the table. McBride’s stubborn naïveté almost won out, but Scotty famously goaded him into making a call while playing the board, saying, “You call and it’s gonna be all over, Baby.” When he won, he sat down to talk to Jack Binion, telling him, “This is my dream, to sit next to you.” The American Dream came to reality.
1999 - Noel Furlong had made the final table of the WSOP Main Event in 1989, but seldom played in the event over the next decade. When he returned in 1999, the Irish businessman, a brutally aggressive player, took the title. It’s because of Furlong’s low-key profile that this Series isn’t as well remembered as those before and after, but he outlasted a stellar final table that included Alan Goehring (2nd), Padraig Parkinson (3rd), Erik Seidel (4th), Chris Bigler(5th), and Huck Seed (6th). He joined Matloubi in becoming just the second non-US-based world champion.
2000 - The new millennium brought with it an old reality: TJ Cloutier getting close to the title without taking it. Cloutier got to the final two against Chris “Jesus” Ferguson with 10% of the chips in play, but he made a game of it, doubling, doubling, and doubling again and even taking a momentary lead on the disheveled Ferguson. Unfortunately for TJ, Ferguson spiked a three-outer on the river of the final hand to take the former football player down yet again. It was TJ’s second second-place finish.
Just as memorable as the final was the final-table run orchestrated by James McManus. In town covering the Ted (son of Benny) Binion murder trial, McManus used his advance to qualify for the Main Event and proceeded to make it to the final table. He was finally taken down by Hasan Habib on a gut-wrenching three-outer of his own. McManus’ journey was immortalized in his Positively Fifth Street.
2001 - The last WSOP not to be broadcast on ESPN, the present televised home of the Series, missed out on a good one. Carlos Mortensen, then a little-known outsider, played his way to victory, defeating Dewey Tomko in the final. Tomko joined Cloutier and Crandell Addington as two-time second-place finishers without a title.
The rest of the final table harkened the poker world that was to come. Phil Gordon (4th), Phil Hellmuth (5th), and Mike Matusow (6th) put on a good show for their Discovery Channel hosts. Just missing the final table was twenty-three year old Canadian named Daniel Negreanu. He finished eleventh, his highest placing in the WSOP Main Event to date.
2002 - “If he wins, I’ll shave my head.” Those were the words uttered by Phil Hellmuth after his elimination at the hands of amateur Robert Varkonyi. Lo and behold, Varkonyi did just that, taking down a low-profile final table that included Julian Gardener, Ralph Perry, and Minh Ly. The big story during play was the collapse of English pro John Shipley, who’d just as soon forget the massive chip lead he entered the final day with only to finish in seventh.
The story after the event was all Hellmuth. Phil, good to his word, provided Varkyoni with clippers so the amateur champion could do the honors. Varkyoni looked painfully awkward, just wanting to celebrate his victory, but Hellmuth and producers were insistent. It was classic Phil, monopolizing the cameras in an event he’d been eliminated from two days earlier.
2003 - Varkonyi’s win was an inspiration. It showed the world that anyone could win, fueling a thousand million dollar dreams. One of the dreamers was a Tennessee accountant named Chris Moneymaker, who became the first online qualifier to win the World Series of Poker.
Moneymaker entered the final a 2-1 chip leader against uber-pro Sammy Farha, but was so nervous/exhausted that he offered an even split regardless. Farha amazingly refused, then proceeded to get bluffed out of the biggest hand of the tournament by Moneymaker. Moneymaker’s perfect name, the recent popularity of televised poker fueled by the WPT, and the explosion of online poker were the perfect storm. The game became a pop cultural phenomenon responsible for (amongst other things) you reading this article right now.
2004 – With 839 players competing in the Main Event in 2003 and as many as 1400 expected the following year, no one could have foreseen the final registration of 2,576 players. Poker was officially the world’s newest, favorite pastime, and everyone wanted to win.
The man who realized that dream was Greg “Fossilman” Raymer. Raymer, unbeknownst to many, had been playing professionally for years, but when he defeated David Williams in the final, he was hailed as another amateur champion. He’d prove he was more than that with his 25th-place finish a year later.
2005 - An astounding 5,619 players put up their cash for a shot at the title in the hopes of following in Moneymaker and Raymer’s footsteps. In the end, it was a little-known professional player from Australia named Joe Hachem who’d take the title, earning himself a cool $7.5 million in the process. It was almost as much as the entire field earned when Moneymaker won the title two years earlier.
The final two days of this event were held at Binion’s Horseshoe like every WSOP before this, but that was merely ceremonial. The Series had outgrown its roots, with the diminutive Horseshoe not capable of housing so many players. Harrah’s who’d bought the rights to the Series from the Binion family earlier in the year, put the Series up at the RIO, closer to the Strip and large enough to accommodate the ludicrously-sized fields. The final two days were a goodbye to the old days. The Series would never return to the Horseshoe.
2006 - The largest tournament of all time was the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event. Even the relatively vacuous RIO required the field be split for the first two days of play. In all, 8,773 players would sign up for the nearly two-week tournament, with television producer Jamie Gold emerging victorious.
Gold’s win of $12 million is a record prize for any competition worldwide, poker or otherwise, and is a record that’s bound to hold up for some time. Gold, Paul Wasicka (2nd), and Michael Binger (3rd) have all gone on to become live tournament circuit mainstays.
2007 - The verdict is still out on the legacy of the 2007 World Series of Poker. In October of 2006, the Safe Port Act passed by the US government banned American financial institutions from dealing with online casinos amongst other entities, and that contributed largely to the decrease in online registration.
“Just” 6,358 players showed up this time, a number far exceeding the expectations of many including popular betting houses, which put the over/under at some 4,400. The winner, Jerry Yang, is a devoutly religious man who believed his win was the work of a greater power. How will this attitude be received by the public? Only time will tell.
Thirty-eight and counting. Long live the World Series of Poker.
Gary Wise is a poker historian, commentator, and columnist for both BLUFF Magazine and ESPN.com. You can find the majority of his work and links to his weekly podcast at www.wisehandpoker.com.
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