Each year, from late April through mid-May, the world’s best poker players converge on Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas’ "Glitter Gulch" to compete in the World Series of Poker.
Comprised of 21 separate events — each costing between $1,500 and $10,000, and anyone with the buy-in is welcome to enter — play begins daily at noon and continues until all but nine players are eliminated. The game reconvenes at 4:00 p.m. the next day and continues until one player wins all the chips.
On Mother’s Day, two events were scheduled: the Women’s Seven Card Stud tournament and the Press Invitational. The latter is designed to provide members of the working press a first-hand world series experience without putting any of their own money at risk. But risk and reward are closely related in poker, and the $1,000 prize paid to this year’s winning journalist pales in comparison to the $1,000,000 that will be awarded the winner of the main event: a $10,000 buy-in, no-limit, Texas hold’em tournament. It’s the Big Kahuna of all poker games, played out over four days, and the winner is regaled as poker’s world champion for the next 12 months.
Popularized in part by the World Series of Poker, Texas hold’em was always the game of choice for southern road gamblers. Now hold’em is favored by most poker players, with the exception of those on the East Coast — where 7-card stud still reigns supreme. Part of hold’em’s popularity is that it’s faster than stud, there’s more action, and there’s no need to rack your brain memorizing exposed cards and folded hands.
It’s a deceptively simple game. Two players to the dealer’s left must post blind bets — before seeing their hand — and each player is dealt two cards face down. Acting in turn, players may either fold, call, or raise the blind bet.
Three cards are turned face up in the center of the table, and another round of betting takes place. These are communal cards — called the flop — and players use their two private cards in conjunction with the communal cards to make the best possible poker hand. Two more communal cards — the turn and the river— are dealt face up, with a round of betting after each. When a hand is concluded, the dealer position and blinds rotate clockwise around the table.
In tournaments, blinds are increased at prescribed intervals, to stimulate action and adjust to the higher chip count of the remaining players.
Most hold’em games are played with betting limits. In a recreational $3-$6 game you may bet or raise in $3 increments before and on the flop, and bet or raise in $6 increments on the turn and river. If you are raised, it will cost another $6 to call.
But no-limit is altogether different. Each entrant at the World Series 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 or greater than yours, you must move all-in to call, or 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 — 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 at a naked bluff? Certainty is rare in no-limit hold’em — and that’s why the great hold’em players all tell you that heart is more important than knowing 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.
In a limit game, all it will cost is a single bet if you are raised, and because you know it, your risk is predictable. In no-limit, your entire stack of chips is always at risk. At the end of four days this year’s world champion may have made a mistake or two over the course of the tournament, but either got lucky and drew out on his opponents, or, more likely, outplayed them at critical junctures.
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. For Johnny Moss and his old friend Benny Binion can take most of the credit for popularizing poker in Las Vegas.
Moss, the Grand Old Man of Poker, was an old time Texas road gambler, a breed made redundant by the proliferation of casinos and legalized poker rooms. Back in 1949, however, only Nevada had legal gaming. That’s when the legendary gambler Nick "the Greek" Dandalos came to town. The Greek wanted to play no-limit poker, and he wanted to play against a single opponent. Benny Binion agreed to host the game, and there was no question in his mind about the man for the job. He immediately called Johnny Moss, who caught the next plane from Dallas, 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 Dandalos lasted five months, punctuated by breaks for sleep every four days. In the end Nick the Greek, who 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 Dandalos 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 21-event tournament. The grand finale, the ten-thousand dollar buy-in, no-limit hold’em tournament attracted 312 participants this year, creating a prize pool of $3,120,000 in the process. The winner, Stu Ungar, a professional poker player from Las Vegas, who also won it in 1980 and 1981, walked away with a cool $1,000,000 — with the remainder of the prize money distributed to the top 27 finishers according to their order of finish.
Just how big has the World Series become? In 1997 alone, 4,053 entrants won a total of more than $12,250,000 million, and new records for the number of entries were established in 16 events. The internationalization of poker has become overwhelmingly apparent in this year’s World Series, as 12 of the 21 events have been won by foreign-born players. Women have also come into their own as formidable competitors. Two women — Linda Johnson and Maria Stern — won open-event titles this year. In the entire 28-year history of the World Series of Poker, only four women have won open events. Maria Stern is also part of another unique record: She and her husband, Dr. Max Stern, are the only couple in World Series history to both win titles — let alone in the same year. After each won a title, Dr. Stern captured a second event for good measure, which he needed to retain the number one ranking in his own household.
If the world series has grown by leaps and bounds, so has Binion’s — and downtown’s Glitter Gulch along with it. Once a shabby, dark, narrow, incredibly noisy casino, Binion’s expanded a few years ago to keep up with it’s growing clientele. Binion’s is always packed. It’s just that now they can pack more customers inside their expanded digs. And if Las Vegas has become more family oriented in recent years — Disneyland with gaming — Binion’s is what it’s always been: a gambling hall for real gamblers, where there’s no upper limit on your bets and no ersatz pirate ships or volcano eruptions to distract serious players. Their formula obviously works because Binion’s expanded while most of downtown was stagnating. Expansion was easy. The Binion family purchased the Mint Hotel and Casino located next door, tore down the walls and doubled their capacity overnight. In addition, the downtown casinos together with the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority jointly finance construction of a lattice-like arch that runs the length of Fremont Street. During the day it mitigates the desert sun. At night, more than 2 million lights controlled by 121 computers and 208 speakers create an extravagant light and sound show every half-hour.
When gaming expanded to Atlantic City, Connecticut, Mississippi, and much of the Midwest, 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 give 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 been done. 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. Surrounded by smoke, green felt, cards, the clacking of chips riffled through the fingers of some six-hundred 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 a record field of 544 entrants..
Kevin Song, a Korean-born former bank manager who came to the United States in 1984, captured the initial event, a $2,000 buy-in, limit, Texas hold’em tournament, when he bested a final table that included reigning world champion Huck Seed and former world champion Berry Johnston, and walked away with a first place prize of $397,120.
The second event, a $1,500 buy-in Razz tournament (Razz is seven-card stud played for low) was won by Card Player magazine publisher Linda Johnson, only the third woman in World Series history to capture an open title, outlasting a field of 160 to win $96,000 and the traditional gold bracelet designed by Neiman-Marcus that’s awarded to each event winner.
But it’s the main event that draws the crowds, and on Monday, May 12, a mob of people milled around the tournament area as names and seating assignments were called and contestants slowly moved to their seats. A dozen former world champs competed in this year’s event, including two time winners Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Stu Ungar, along with 27 year-old Huck Seed, the defending champion. Formerly an engineering student at Cal Tech, Seed took a year’s sabbatical to play poker and never returned.
Hollywood, too, was represented, as actor Vince Van Patten was announced. A few minutes later player number 300, TV and movie actor Gabe Kaplan’s name was called. Not only do 300 contestants comprise a new record, it means the prize pool will exceed $3 million. Finally the last entrant, contestant number 312 is announced, and Tournament Director Jack McClelland shouts, "OK dealers, shuffle up and deal." At 1:10 p.m. the 1997 World Series of Poker was underway.
The first day is always one of positioning. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and they will play until 167 competitors remain. As a result, most contestants are cautious, not wanting to endanger their entire $10,000 buy-in during the tournament’s first hours. Nevertheless, a few whales are eliminated the first day, including former champs Dan Harrington, Jack Keller, Jim Bechtel, and Huck Seed. Van Patten and Kaplan bust out too, although Gabe Kaplan, well regarded as a strong player in his own right, was promptly hired by ESPN to provide color commentary for their final day coverage.
When play finally ended in the early hours of the morning, Peter Bao, a 26 year-old student, held the lead with almost $65,000. Although five other players were within $6,000 of him, his most formidable opponent was two-time champ Stu Ungar, comfortably ensconced in seventh place.
At noon on the second day of competition, Tournament Director Jack McClelland announced they would play down to 27 contestants, regardless of how long it took. Day two is cut day. Players who don’t make the cut, can’t earn any money — just like golf. Every player surviving to the third day is guaranteed a payoff of at least $21,200. Throughout the day players are eliminated and tables are combined. At one point, with only 6 tables remaining, one table had four former world champions at it: Two time winners Doyle Brunson and Stu Ungar, along with Berry Johnston, and Phil Hellmuth. One contestant, seated with Brunson to his right and Hellmuth on his left, said, "…it felt like being caught between a gas chamber and the electric chair."
As the hour grew late, the number of competitors diminished to 28. Play slowed to a crawl. Players with only a few chips left were on the bubble. The next player eliminated would finish out of the money, while the others would return to play for pay tomorrow. After what seemed like hours, Chris Ferguson moved all-in for $39,000 with an ace and a jack in his hand. He was called by a player holding a pair of queens. The communal cards helped neither player and Ferguson was eliminated one place out of the money. It was a hand Ferguson did not have to play. Although short on chips, his count was not the lowest, and conservative play would probably have allowed him to finish in the money. Ferguson erred and knew it, and the hand that closed out day two was Monday morning quarterbacked by most of the breakfast set at Binion’s coffee shop the next day.
The third day began with Las Vegas professional poker player Ron Stanley leading the pack with $400,000 — nearly twice that of his nearest competitor. Since the 19th to 27th place finishers would all receive the same amount of money, play loosened up, as some of the contestants who were short on chips and facing elimination began taking risks in an effort to propel themselves into a higher pay category or die trying.
The last surviving Midwesterner, Dewey Weum, of Monona, WI, was knocked out in 23rd place, earning $21,200 for his efforts. A few minutes later, former world champ Phil Hellmuth, who lived in Madison, WI, in 1989 — the year he won it all — was eliminated when his pair of eights was beaten by a pair of nines held by Norway’s Tormod Roren.
When Roren was eliminated later that evening, only six contestants remained, setting the stage for tomorrow’s final table, to be played outdoors on Fremont Street. Stadium seating for the general public was erected under the curved, lattice-like space frame of the Fremont Street Experience. Bleachers replaced card tables in Binion’s tournament area, and crews were laying cable and wheeling in big screen TVs to provide additional viewing for the main event.
The six remaining contestants for poker’s biggest prize took their seats at the table shortly after 10:00 Thursday morning, and ESPN’s color man Gabe Kaplan conducted short, "up-close-and-personal" interviews with each finalist. We learned that the man with the shortest chip count, Peter Bao, is a 26 year-old college student majoring in computer science, who moved to the United States nine years ago from his native Viet Nam.
John Strzemp, by contrast, is a 45 year-old gaming executive, who is President of Las Vegas’ Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. He enters poker tournaments only occasionally and has never finished in the money at the World Series of Poker before this year.
Mel Judah is a savvy, 49 year-old professional from London, England, who has finished in the money at the World Series of Poker 15 times, and is well regarded on the tournament circuit. Like Judah, Bob Walker is a 57 year-old professional poker player. He is also a former college mathematics professor. But Bob specializes in ring games, and this marked the first time he entered a major poker tournament. Ron Stanley, formally dressed for the occasion in a tuxedo — with black-and-white baseball cap to match — is a 44 year-old Las Vegas pro who has accumulated World Series earnings of more than $326,000 to date.
Stu Ungar completes the field. Once known as "The Kid" the then 27 year-old stunned the poker world in 1980 and 1981 when he captured the title two years in a row. He has already won more than $1,000,000 at the Horseshoe’s annual poker tournament, and was once regarded by knowledgeable insiders as one of the top poker players in the world. In addition, he was generally acknowledged to be one of the best gin rummy player in history. But tough times and health problems beset Ungar over the past few years, and this tournament marks a comeback of sorts for him.
The generally accepted wisdom among the punters was that Ungar, who began the day with a chip lead of almost $400,000 over Ron Stanley, his nearest competitor, would sit quietly and let others eliminate themselves before moving into the fray with both guns blazing. But Ungar’s reputation was not built on passivity. It centered around two critical skills: Unrelenting aggression in suitable situations and an almost uncanny ability to read his opponents and know with near-certainty what cards they were playing. At the top of his game, it almost seems like Ungar’s opponents are playing their cards face up — while his are disguised and unfathomable.
Ungar attacked early and often. His opponents frequently folded. One important way that a tournament differs from a ring game is this: You’re not really wagering money in a tournament so much as you are betting a portion of your total equity in the game. For Ungar, with his huge chip lead, a bet of $20,000 represented only two percent of his $1,000,000 equity. For Peter Bao, $20,000 represented ten times that amount.
No one wanted to be the first player eliminated. The sixth place finisher would receive $127,200 — not a bad pay day, but substantially less than fifth place, which would be awarded $162,120. Fourth place would earn $212,000, while third place was worth $371,000. Second place paid $583,000, while the winner walks away with a cool $1,000,000. At each fork in the road, staying alive was a far better alternative than elimination, and survival meant avoiding a confrontation with chip leader Stu Ungar.
At one point Ungar raised seven hands in a row. No one called. Was he bluffing? Sure. Some of the time. Everyone knew that. What no one knew was when. Every contestant hoped one of his opponents would be eliminated first. It didn’t matter which one. Every time someone was knocked out, the surviving players climbed another rung on the pay ladder.
Ungar knew this. He sensed it. His mastery of the table was almost palpable. He was a shark in a school of fish who saw blood in the water. Peter Bao, short on chips the entire day, was the first to fall — eliminated by Mel Judah. By 1:30 p.m. Stu Ungar had more chips than his remaining four opponents combined.
His biggest competitor was fellow Las Vegas pro Ron Stanley, sitting in second place. But five minutes later an incredible event took place. Ron Stanley raised John Strzemp, putting him all-in. Stanley had a pair of kings; Strzemp a pair of tens. The flop helped no one, and Stanley was a huge favorite to win that pot. But the turn card was a ten, a miracle card, giving Strzemp trip tens. The river card was a blank, and Stanley stared at the table in shock. When Mel Judah announced that he discarded a ten, Stanley knew he suffered what poker players call a bad-beat. Only one card remaining in the deck could have won the hand for Strzemp and he caught it. After the flop, with two cards to come, Strzemp’s chances of catching the lone remaining ten were less than five percent. He faced elimination as a 22-to-1 longshot and survived!
By 2:00 Ungar held 60 percent of all the chips in play, and showed no signs of letting up. None of his opponents seemed willing to settle for a fifth place finish, since fourth place paid $50,000 more. Fifteen minutes later the stalemate was broken when Mel Judah’s humble pair of deuces proved strong enough to finish Bob Walker, who flopped four to a straight and four to a flush. But neither flush nor straight materialized, and the war of attrition claimed another victim.
Ron Stanley, shaken from the bad beat administered by Strzemp and an earlier confrontation when Ungar bluffed him out of a $200,000 pot — then flipped his cards face up on the table as if to show the world just what he was capable of doing — was the next player eliminated when he ran into John Strzemp’s full house. Now three contestants remained at the final table, but only for a moment. Dangerously low on chips, Mel Judah was eliminated when he lost a pot to Stu Ungar.
After a short break it was Ungar against Strzemp — heads-up. During the break Jack Binion, accompanied by eight very large security guards, carried a box filled with $1,000,000 in hundred dollar bills to the table, awaiting the outcome of the final confrontation. Ten minutes later Strzemp made a big bet. Ungar deliberated for what seemed like an excessively long time. He riffled chips through his fingers. He glanced furtively at Strzemp, peering over the tops of his bright, blue sunglasses, trying to read him, trying to catch any sort of sign — or tell, as poker players call it — that will provide the clue he’s looking for. Suddenly he snapped erect and pushed his chips to the center of the pot, putting Strzemp all-in. Since there could be no more betting, both players turned their hands face up. Strzemp held ace-eight; Ungar ace-four.
The dealer turned the flop over. It was ace-three-five. Each player had a pair of aces, but Strzemp’s side card puts him in the lead. The turn was another three. Now each player had two pair: aces and eights. But Strzemp’s hand was ace-ace-three-three-eight, while Ungar held ace-ace-three-three-four.
Everyone knew the odds. If the river card was a five, six, or seven, Strzemp would win the pot, since his side card would be bigger than any unpaired cards on the board. If the river card was a nine or higher, the pot would be split — since both side cards would be obviated by the higher communal river card. Ungar could win only if the river card was a four — giving him aces and fours against Strzemp’s aces and treys — or a deuce, which would complete his straight.
The river card was a deuce. Strzemp seemed crushed, and Ungar elated. Stu Ungar, now 43 years old and no longer "The Kid" who won it two years running in 1980 and ‘81, captured poker’s biggest prize for the third time, dominating a field of world-class professionals and top notch big-money players from America, Europe, South America, and Asia in the process.
For tourists and poker fans it’s all over too, until next year, or at least this summer, when it will be shown on ESPN. For the professional poker players it’s only over until the next shot at glory, next month — or even next week — at another poker tournament somewhere in Nevada, California, Mississippi, Atlantic City, Connecticut, or Europe. After all, other poker tournaments pay big money too. But none pay quite so well, are quite so glitzy, quite so well-attended, or are quite so prestigious as the enduring symbol of the quintessentially American game of poker: The World Series of Poker, held annually at Binion’s Horseshoe — on Fremont Street, in Glitter Gulch, in downtown Las Vegas, where Johnny Moss once cleaned out Nick the Greek and Stu Ungar crushed 312 opponents to win $1,000,000 and be universally acclaimed as the world’s best poker player, at least until next year.
Note: Less than six months after this piece was written, Stu Ungar was found dead in a cheap motel off the Vegas strip, an apparent victim of his own excesses. It was a sad day for his family and friends, and a sad day for poker. Ungar may have been history’s greatest card player. A movie on his life is currently in development, and noted poker author Nolan Dalla’s biography of Stu Ungar will be released in late 2003 or early 2004.
Taken from www.loukrieger.com
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