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One thing we never get to see on television these days is tilt. I don’t mean Phil Hellmuth overreacting to some donkey riling him up, only to have Phil come back to the table and resume his normal mode of play; I mean grown men or women, consciously aware of the value of their chips, getting so damn angry that they decide that value is irrelevant in the face of primal emotion. I’m looking for a little rage here.
A good part of this has to come from the fact that we’re always going to be conscious of the cameras. They keep the live wires in check and generally follow the winners, meaning we don’t get to see the poor guy who hasn’t seen a hand for two hours and wants to flip the table. Thing is, the cameras haven’t been around forever; that means looking back, and we can find a few good examples of players losing all semblance of self-control.
In the 1984 World Series of Poker Main Event, Jesse Alto gave us the kind of no-hold-barred emotional relapse I’m talking about. Alto, the owner of a poker club in Corpus Christi, Texas, was an excellent player who’d made the final table of the Main Event three times prior to 1984 and would go on to three more before the decade was out. Alto’s reputation as a player was overshadowed only by his reputation as a hothead. He’d play brilliant poker for hours or days and then let it all come undone in a moment of frustration.
Cowboy Wolford, meanwhile, was the opposite kind of man. Littleriled him and he was always on the lookout for that better angle. He’d long been a friend of Alto’s, trading money in times of need, playing cards together for years, and sure, getting into the occasional scrap; but there was a respect and kinship there that set up what many have called the greatest bluff in Series history.
Playing with bundles of money in lieu of the regular chips, the game became serious when it got down to three players. Alto had the lead going in and wasn’t afraid to exploit it; he started raising every hand and extending his substantial lead in the process, with almost $1 million to Jack Keller’s $200,000 and Wolford’s $156,000. Finally, Cowboy’d had enough. He made a decision to play back at Alto “on the next hand” and resolved to call Alto’s inevitable pre-flop raise regardless of his holdings.
When the flop came Ac Kd 9c, Cowboy tossed $15,000 into the pot, roughly 10% of his stack. Alto called quickly and the turn was Kh. Cowboy fired again, this time for $40,000. Alto paused for a moment before making the call.
With the 2s on the river not helping anyone, Wolford slowly tore the paper off the last of the bundles of cash in front of him and dropped their holdings into the pot. He only looked away from Alto long enough to catch the eye of his wife and child in the audience, giving them a wink and a smile. If Alto called and lost, he’d have given a substantial number of chips to a very good professional, but would still hold a substantial lead. Winning this pot would knock Wolford out and virtually assure Jesse of the championship. While his cards remain unknown to this day, it’s generally agreed by those who were there that his hand was a strong one, but he finally decided he wasn’t beating his old buddy and mucked the hand.
Wolford threw his 5-3o on the table for all to see. Many have called this the greatest bluff in World Series history, but that may be a reaction to the effect it would have on the championship. Alto was beside himself. He explained why in All-In: the (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker, by Jonathon Grotenstein and Storms Reback: “I just couldn’t handle it. He and I have been friends all our lives. Whenever he needed anything, he would come to me for it, so for him to bluff me at that point just tore me up. I didn’t object to him winning the hand, I just wish he hadn’t shown it to me. If he’d just thrown his hand in the muck, things would have been all right.”
As it was, Wolford’s bravado was Alto’s undoing. Jesse went ballistic, moving his chips to the middle of the pot without so much as a peek at his hole cards in each of the next two hands. The true beneficiary here was Jack Keller, who called Alto’s two blind moves and won both hands, propelling him to eventual victory. Jesse was out of the tournament. He stormed out of the Horseshoe, having blown what would ultimately be his best shot at the title he’d never win. Alto took home $132,000. Wolford got double that for surviving the explosion for which he’d set the fuse.
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