The History of the World Series of Poker

The History of the World Series of Poker

Posted on April 13, 2008

The 2006 World Series of Poker $10,000 buy-in No-Limit Texas Hold’em Championship’s Main Event’s record set in 2006 still seems unlikely to get beaten even in 2008; two years after Jamie Gold won a staggering $12,000,000 first prize.

Of all sports records, this is the most impressive monetary win ever.

The World Series of Poker has come a long way since 1970, when just a few seasoned pros gathered in Vegas to see who “the best of the best” was.

It all began with three men, years before the first WSOP, in 1949, when Nick “the Greek” Dandalos asked Lester “Benny” Binion, the owner of the Horseshoe Casino in Downtown Las Vegas, to arrange the biggest poker game of all time.

Binion knew just the guy to take on the Greek – Johnny Moss, who at the time was regarded as the best poker player in the world. With Benny’s promise to bankroll Johnny the match was on, and so started a game that would go on for five long months.

They played every type of poker for huge pots of hundreds of thousands of dollars until at last, the Greek decided he was beat and got up from the table saying, the immortal words “Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.”

The epic battle between Moss and Dandalos sparked an idea in Benny Binion’s head and in 1970 he invited the best poker players he knew - Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim Preston, Brian “Sailor” Roberts, Puggy Pearson, Crandall Addington and Carl Cannon to play No Limit Texas Hold’em against each other in front of a crowd.

Instead of playing until one player had all the chips, the players voted on who was best, and Johnny Moss was unanimously chosen.

In 1971 the World Series was a freeze-out, winner-take-all tournament, which Johnny Moss once again won. Over the following years, it evolved into a “shared purse” tournament, in which not only the first place winner, but several other top finishers won a share of the prize money.

Registration was open to anyone who had the $10,000 bucks to put up, and enrollment grew, but it wasn’t until satellite tournaments for the event were started that the numbers really started growing. Now, instead of the whole 10K, players could win a 10K seat by winning their way through a field of players at a lower buy-in satellite tournament.

Still, the number of players at the Main Event remained under a thousand until in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker won the top prize, turning a $40 satellite win into $2.5 Million.

And will Jamie Gold’s 2006 record of $12m get beaten this year? It seems unlikely under the effects of present US legislation – but at least we can drink alcohol now.

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