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History Of The WSOP
History Of The WSOP
The first World Series Of Poker was held in 1970, featured only 35 players, and ended with a player vote to determine would take the title of “The World's Best Poker Player.” The event took place at the Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas and was held more as a publicity stunt to drive traffic to Binions than as an attempt to legitimize poker in the public mind. The first WSOP featured five versions of poker and ended with Johnny Moss being voted "The World Champion Of Poker." Can you imagine if they tried that now? “Ok folks, congratulations to Mr. Johnny Chan for winning the most chips during the event. Now, everyone take out your ballots and vote for who you think the winner should be.” I don’t think that would sit too well…
The next year the WSOP was changed to the present day “freeze-out” format whereas the last man standing wins. Surprisingly they decided that they didn’t want to vote that year and instead preferred that the champion actually win the event. I would imagine Johnny Moss gained some satisfaction that year when he won the event outright rather than being voted the champion.
The $10,000 buy-in price was added in 1972 which may be the reason the WSOP only had eight participants that year! Amarillo Slim won the event and pocketed a cool $80,000, a nice sum for that time. From it’s humble beginnings at Binions the WSOP steadily grew in numbers and popularity, and in 2000 featured 519 competitors vying for a prize of $1,500,000 which was won by Chris “Jesus” Ferguson.
It was around this time that the internet poker craze began to gain momentum. Rather than having to travel to Vegas or some other far off location, anyone from anywhere in the world could play poker for real money simply by logging onto the internet. The wide availability of online poker and some intelligent marketing done by Party Poker and other sites built up the poker hype to an almost fanatical level. This culminated in 2003 when Chris Moneymaker after winning his buy-in at an internet poker site won the 2003 WSOP taking home $2,500,000. Having never entered a live poker tournament before and being a complete unknown, Moneymaker basically used aggressiveness and luck to push his way through the event, at one point knocking Johnny Chan out of the tournament! His lack of experience and some would argue “skill,” showed players the world over that “anyone” could enter the WSOP and have a fighting chance. The poker craze that ensued after Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the 2003 WSOP led to the number of entrants ballooning over the next couple years. A staggering 5,618 participants competed in the 2005 WSOP with the prize being a mammoth $7,500,000! Australian born Joseph Hachem won the event and unlike Chris Moneymaker actually paid the full $10,000 to enter the event.
The 2006 WSOP will be held at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Vegas. You can check out the latest WSOP News here.