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Ladies and Gentleman, the hour is finally at hand. The
2005 WSOP is upon us and all this year’s other
important events (daughter’s marriage, sale of
house, death of family pet, new Star Wars movie) suddenly
seem completely insignificant. This is the biggest ever
World Series, with the biggest record-shattering first
prize ever, bigger than any other sporting event in
history of the world. We heard Howard Greenbaum at Harrah’s
already began working on the 2005 WSOP before the last
one had finished, which gives you some idea of the scale
of this monstrous, pan-galactic behemoth of a poker
match.
How many players can we expect? 4,000, 5,000, 6,600?
Prize pool? $50 million? More? Will a pro win it this
year? Will a pro ever win it again? Could we see the
first ever female champ? These are all questions that
have been plaguing us like locusts and raining frogs
down at Bluff HQ. We don’t have all the answers,
but if you’re planning to join the world’s
deadliest battle on the field of felt, here’s
some stuff that may (or may not) prepare you for the
task ahead. Remember, there can be only one…
If Lou Krieger can't tell us how to win the WSOP, then
you got us stumped. Maybe these guys can help. Bluff
meets the last five WSOP champtions...
2004: Greg Raymer
Greg Raymer, the 2004 World Champion of Poker, a patent
attorney, fossil collector, ex-blackjack card counter
and one time stand up comic, claims that this time last
year, he was just your ‘average, middle-class,
nine-to-five guy’. We, of course, don’t
believe a word of it. This big, friendly bear of a man
with crazy hologram glasses, charged through 2,576 players
to win $5 million, the biggest prize at a sporting event
– ever! Greg won his seat into the tournament
playing, like Moneymaker before him, on PokerStars.com,
prompting headlines of a back-to-back amateur online
invasion at the World Series. This is, however, misleading.
Greg was no Internet amateur and was always far more
likely to be found grinding away down at Foxwoods than
he was glued to his monitor chasing virtual chips. And
to the folks at Foxwoods, his domination of last year’s
final table came as less of a surprise than to the rest
of us.
“It really depends on how you define amateur,”
says Greg. “People say you need to make your living
purely from poker, or you’re an amateur. Is Lyle
Berman, therefore, an amateur? He plays in the biggest
games in the world. When it comes to skill level, he’s
better than 95% of pros by the tightest definition you
want. I consider myself better than most professionals
who are making a living playing poker.”
You can’t really win the World Series these days
and go back to the same ‘average, middleclass
nine-to-five’ life you had before. Greg was catapulted
into the media glare, and he loved it. “Instead
of having a job with rules and regulations, policies
and procedures, I get to play poker. I go on TV shows
and talk to reporters, sign autographs, strike endorsement
deals. If I go to a public place with lots of people,
I get recognized. But I think it’s been easy to
adjust. I don’t have to prove anything to myself
with my results. I only have to feel that I’m
making good decisions – then I’m happy.”
Untold wealth has not spoiled this man who famously
flew back home after his win in the economy class seat
he’d pre-booked before the tournament.
“I’m not a very extravagant person,”
he admits, although he does confess to a recent ‘splurge’
at an antiques auction, where he bought rather a lot
of Roman glass. And fossils, of course.
Ah, the fossils. Before winning the World Championship,
Greg was doing a nice little line down at Foxwoods,
selling off extensive parts of his collection to his
fellow poker players for use as card protectors.
Time to put him to the test:
Which make better card-protectors, belemnites or trilobites?
“Depends,” muses Greg. “It depends
how a fossil has been prepared. Some of those trilobites
are very fragile. They have long thin feelers and they
wouldn’t make very good card protectors.”
And there you have it.
BEST POKER PLAYER IN THE WORLD?
“It’s an impossible question to answer.
I know it’s not me.”
HOW TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES
“I think the way to win the WSOP is the same as
for any tournament, and any poker game. You study hard
to improve your game, and play each hand for itself.
By that I mean, don’t have preset plans or goals.
The only plan you should have is to make each decision
that you face as perfectly as possible, and let the
results work themselves out. You can’t make things
happen in poker. You either get the cards and the situations
you need, or you don’t. If you set a goal such
as “I’m going to double my chip count by
the end of Level 3,” this may lead you into doing
silly things. For example, if you’re at $15,000
near the end of Level 3, you might play some hands you
know you should fold, because playing these hands is
the best way to achieve your goal of reaching $20,000.
This would be a pretty clear mistake.
“So, take all the information available to you
into account, and play each hand in a manner that maximizes
your expectation, and don’t try to achieve any
other goals.”
2003: Chris Moneymaker
When, circa 2000, an acquaintance of Christopher Bryan
Moneymaker traveled to Tunica Mississippi and played
a game called Texas Hold’em, he felt he just had
to take it back to his home game pals in Tennessee.
Little did he know what he was unleashing on the world.
Amazingly, just three years later, Moneymaker was World
Champion.
The impact Chris had on the poker world cannot be overemphasized.
You’ve all heard the story: the American everyman
who had never played a live tournament before qualified
online for $40. With mounting debts and a baby on the
way, he had to borrow his airfare to Vegas, yet he outlasted
hordes of the best players in the world to win the championship
and $2.5 million. The media immediately picked up on
his unlikely name and fairytale story, and suddenly
poker was headline-grabbing news. He spearheaded the
cyberpoker invasion, empowering legions of amateur players
to believe they could emulate his feat. If it weren’t
for Chris, we probably wouldn’t be looking at
the kind of WSOP prize pool today that makes you giddy
just thinking about it.
Typically, this self-effacing Nashville family man
is having none of it: “I’m not the kind
of person to think about that stuff,” he says
laconically. “I guess it’s a big deal. People
complain you can’t get a table anymore because
of me, but I never had a lot of experience in a real
live casino anyway, so it’s not a huge change.”
Ironically, Chris and his pals did not immediately
take to Hold’em. He preferred wild card games
like Acey Deucey in those days. “We didn’t
like it at first,” he recalls, “but we played
Dealer’s Choice, so every time it was my friend’s
turn to deal, he would make us play it. We hated it.
But after a while we developed a liking for it.”
Chris took a while to live up to his name: his warts-and-all
autobiography details his battles with booze and a distinctly
unprofitable fascination with sports betting. Gradually,
the reconstituted action junkie began to find a more
lucrative outlet in online poker. “I started to
travel a lot with my job and, as I was on the road a
lot, I didn’t have anything to do in the evenings,
so I sat at my computer and played Texas Hold’em.”
Heaven knows where a man who had gained all his experience
online acquired a poker face to rival any of those at
Mount Rushmore, but this stony-eyed resolve, along with
a level of aggression and fearlessness that belied his
experience (and a good dose of luck) took him all the
way. You can read all about it in his own words on pg.
48.
Perhaps in shock, Chris attempted to go back to normal
after his victory and returned to his day job as an
accountant. He bought himself a smart new car, but only
because he totalled his old one a week after the final.
Nine months later, however, he yielded to his newfound
celebrity, gave up his job and became a fully-fledged
poker superstar.
Moneymaker has since silenced those cynics who dismissed
his victory as a fluke (shame on you) with several high-profile
finishes. As he limbers up for the 2005 WSOP, he’s
a stronger player than ever, though he admits to being
afraid that the poker gods have finally deserted him.
“I’ve been drawing bad for the last three
months, so I’m taking a break, just trying to
clear my head. I’m not playing any tournaments
until the WSOP.”
ENDURING MEMORY OF THE WSOP
“Just my dad being there, supporting me. Just
to experience the whole thing with him – sitting
behind me at the final table.”
BEST POKER PLAYER IN THE WORLD?
“I admire Daniel Negreanu. He keeps a level head
and he handles himself well at, and away from, the table.”
HOW TO WIN THE WSOP
“Don’t lose all you money with one pair.”
2002: Robert Varkonyi
The 2002 Champion keeps a low profile these days. A
relatively rare face on the tournament trail now, he
fills his days with poker writing, giving the occasional
lecture and promoting a new casino card game called
Hawaii Hi/Lo, of which he says he has, “high hopes
and low expectations - just like I did with the World
Series.”
“I’m probably a relatively boring guy compared
to some of the colorful personalities you get in poker,”
apologizes Robert, who proceeds to tell us how he spent
the year leading up to the World Series, globetrotting
Errol Flynn-style with his new Russian bride.
“I finally realized we’d been living a
fantasy life – all fun and adventure – and
I would have to go back to the real world, back to work.
I called a friend of mine on September 10, 2001, who
was a senior trader on the American Stock Exchange,
and he told me he could get me a job there. I thought
I was settled, and then the very next day the job was
vaporized by the terrorist attack, and I knew there
was no way I was going to find work in the climate that
followed. So it was
back to fantasy world for a while.” Hence the
World Series…
It was Robert’s first Main Event at the WSOP
and he was naturally nervous: “I was just praying
not to do anything stupid; just to survive to the end
of the day. At the end of Day 1, I was just so pleased
to survive to Day 2. At the end of Day 2, I was ecstatic.
At the end of Day 3, I was the chip leader. On Day 4,
I said the same prayer and I made the final table. I
thought: ‘Wow, this is amazing. Now I’ve
got to try to win this thing.’ I had no expectation
about winning; I was just praying that each day I wouldn’t
do anything really foolish.
“I had a few lucky hands along the way, but none
of them were huge underdogs. I was never worse off than
2-1. I didn’t trap myself in any real longshot
situations. Anyone who makes the final table and says
they didn’t get lucky along the way is full of
crap. You gotta get lucky, but you don’t need
that much luck – the odds in any poker hand are
never astronomical. It’s not like the lottery.”
Robert will always be remembered, other than as World
Champion, as the man who caused Phil Hellmuth to lose
his hair. On Day 3, Varkonyi found himself in late position
with Q-10 suited and raised. Hellmuth, who was defending
his big blind, re-raised with his A-K.
“I thought it was a defensive move,” recalls
Robert. “So I went all-in to test him. He thought
about it a long time and then called, and he was somewhat
pleased when he saw my hand. But he was only a little
less than a 2-1 favorite. The flop came A-Q-10 with
nothing on the turn or river. It crippled him and he
was out on the next hand. He griped under his breath,
‘Amateur,’ as he left. I don’t know
what that means – I was in and he was out and
that’s it.“
Hellmuth rather rashly told ESPN: “If Robert
Varkonyi wins this tournament, I’ll shave my head.”
Sensing the opportunity to steal a bit of Varkonyi’s
limelight, the Poker Brat organized a public head-shaving
ceremony at the end of the tournament.
“I guess he just wanted some Hammertime,”
sniffs Robert.
ENDURING MEMORY OF THE WSOP
“The most vivid memory I have is watching Chris
Ferguson beat TJ Cloutier in 2000. It’s the only
final table that I watched live. I’ll never forget
Chris catching that nine on the river.”
BEST POKER PLAYER IN THE WORLD?
“My wife. We went to Foxwoods recently and she
sat down and won herself a buy-in to a $10,000 event.
A week later, we went to the Sands in Atlantic City
and she did the same – all this, while breast-feeding
the baby.”
HOW TO WIN THE WSOP
“Pure guts and luck.”
2001: Carlos Mortensen
The 2001 WSOP didn’t start off too well for Juan
Carlos Mortensen, who had somehow managed to eliminate
85% of his chipstack within the first hour of the tournament;
a turn of events which prompted this great aggressive
gambler to wonder whether it might just be time to tighten
up a
little. Sure enough, Carlos became a rock; he battled
hard and, by the time he’d achieved his first
objective – to make it into the money –
the only thing on his mind was winning.
“When I got to the final table I had 837,000
and the chip leader had 1,020,000. I didn’t pay
attention to anything around me,” he tells us.
“There was a lot of emotion, and distracting TV
cameras around. However, the only thing that was in
my mind was poker and the other players. I had really
observed the other players’ game during the previous
days and learned a lot about the way they played.”
He gradually muscled his way to a chip lead and, eventually,
a heads-up battle with Dewey Tomko, which ended, as
had the previous year’s contest, with a 9 on the
river, making Carlos a straight to take out Tomko’s
pocket aces. It capped an amazing year for this great
champ, who promptly went out and bought a new BMW.
Carlos was born in Ambato, Ecuador, and moved to Madrid,
Spain, when he was 15. He started playing poker in 1997.
“I used to play chess and pool in a club while
I waited for my wife to get off work. One day, one of
the guys who had just got back from the US showed us
Texas Hold’em. I decided to play with the $100
I had in my pocket and lost. That night, I couldn’t
sleep; I was just thinking about why I lost. I decided
the next day to go back and play. I won four nights
in a row.”
Carlos met Gonzalo Garcia Pelayo, a master roulette
player and a pioneer of poker in Spain, who immediately
recognized the young man’s extraordinary talent
for card playing. “He told me about many people
in the US that played poker for a living,” says
Carlos “I didn’t think twice. I left my
job to concentrate all of my time on poker. After six
months, all the Spanish poker players were broke. So
I decided to come to the US with $2,800 and a backpack.”
Prior to winning the WSOP, he had entered the competition
twice, finishing in the middle of the field. However,
throughout 2001 Carlos had been on fire, making a big
name for himself by winning both the LA Poker Classic
and the Shooting Stars tournaments.
Carlos, who says he is training for the 2005 WSOP by
playing a lot online and at tournaments up and down
the country, remains the only player to take the World
Championship outside the United States.
ENDURING MEMORY OF THE WSOP
“I remember the hand that made me a winner so
well. This was one of the most exciting experiences
of my poker career. I achieved my goal of becoming the
World Champion.”
BEST POKER PLAYER IN THE WORLD?
“There are a lot of great poker players, but if
I had to choose the one I most admire, it would be Doyle
Brunson.”
HOW TO WIN THE WSOP
“In the year I became the champion I lost 85%
of my chips in the first hour; however, I did not lose
the desire to win. Never surrender; even if you have
few chips you can become a champion.”
2000: Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson
As Chris Ferguson prepared to go heads-up against TJ
Cloutier in the final of the 2000 World Series, the
computer whiz-kid and math prodigy drew on his years
of studying mind-boggling algorithms and advanced game
theory. His giant poker brain whirred and hummed under
his cowboy hat and finally calculated that, according
to the immutable laws of mathematics, the best chance
he had of beating the seasoned Cloutier was to repeatedly
shove all his chips into the pot, close his eyes and
hope for the best.
We’re being facetious, of course, but Ferguson’s
aim was to shut Cloutier down and force him to gamble,
to prevent him from playing his regular game and, with
the help of that nine on the river, it worked. Chris
ushered in a new style for a new century, a style very
much of his own making based on pinpointing subtle probabilities:
Ferguson is a truly awesome poker player and was a great
new champ for a new millennium.
The instant fame and sponsorship deals that greeted
Raymer and Moneymaker, did not come Chris’s way,
however. This was pre-poker boom: “The truth is
my life didn’t change that much after the win
at all,” he tells us. “It changed very little.
Poker wasn’t really very popular back then. Nowadays,
I can’t walk through an airport without being
stopped. That was nothing to do with the World Series,
it happened because the popularity of poker exploded
with televised poker. My life has changed a lot since
my win, but for the first two years nothing happened.”
Ferguson had just completed his PhD in Computer Science
at UCLA before the 2000 WSOP. Already a high-profile
player, it was the fifth time he had entered the Main
Event. His highest previous placing had been 28th in
1997. “Right on the bubble,” he complains.
“28th paid zero. 27th would have paid, I think,
$22,000.” This time, however, he fended off 512
competitors to net himself a not-to-be-sneezed-at $1.5
million. Chris, however, famous for his levelheaded
frugality, prefers the security of a healthy bankroll
to the latest modern material trappings. He bought a
new TV.
While he admits he’s not currently in the form
he’d like to be going into the 2005 WSOP –
other commitments, such as his day-job at FullTiltPoker.com,
prevent him from playing as many tournaments as he’d
like to these days – he plans on playing every
single preliminary event leading up to the main event
this year.
ENDURING MEMORY OF THE WSOP
“One of the happiest events in my life is starting
play at the World Series each year. To me it’s
like Christmas [says Jesus]. The Main Event is just
so much fun. I love to play poker, and there’s
this incredible anticipation to playing in the biggest
event in poker. I know I’m about to do something
I really love. Nothing motivates me like the Main Event.
I play my best poker ever.”
BEST POKER PLAYER IN THE WORLD?
“Probably Phil Ivey…”
HOW TO WIN THE WSOP
“You have to be two things that don’t often
co-exist. You have to be tenacious; you can never give
up and you have to fight over every chip. But at the
same time, you have to be incredibly patient. You will
see opportunities to take advantage of your opponents,
but you can’t force them. You just have to let
them happen.”
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