history of poker Archives - Paul Phua Poker

Over nearly 50 years, the Main Event at the World Series of Poker has witnessed extraordinary dramas and created huge stars. The Paul Phua Poker School picks the top 10 events you really need to know

How did the poker tournament expression “a chip and a chair” come about? Why is 10-2 known as “the Doyle Brunson”? Where did the poker movie Rounders get its final hand? How did Phil Hellmuth become famous at 24? In what way did the WSOP’s 2003 live tournament change the face of internet poker? All is revealed below. If only history lessons at school had been this fun…

1970-1: The World Series of Poker is born

The very first World Series of Poker was not even a tournament: the pros were simply asked to elect the man they thought was the best player. Legend has it that at first they all voted for themselves, so a winner was only announced after they were told to name the second best player! That man was Johnny Moss, and the very next year, when a tournament structure was introduced to the WSOP, Moss proved the vote right by winning fair and square. He went on to be known as “The Grand Old Man of Poker”. Read more

1976-1977: How the “Doyle Brunson hand” got its name

There are lucky hands, and then there is the “Doyle Brunson hand” – a hand so ridiculously lucky that it forever more bears the name of the man who played it. Aged 83, Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson has now won 10 WSOP bracelets, but none more spectacularly than his two back-to-back Main Event wins. Holding just 10-2, he made a house to knock out his heads-up opponent Jesse Alto in 1976. Incredibly, the very next year he again made a house with 10-2 to knock out Gary “Bones” Berland. Read more

1982: Jack Straus and the original “chip and a chair”

You may have heard the poker expression, “as long as you’ve got a chip and a chair…” It means that no matter how few chips you are left with in a poker tournament, you always have a chance. But you may not know that this saying was born at the World Series of Poker in 1982. The story of how Jack “Treetop” Straus recovered from a single chip to win the Main Event and $520,000 is not just the greatest underdog story in poker, but possibly in any sport. Read more

1988: Johnny Chan retains his WSOP title with the “Rounders” hand

Johnny Chan, nicknamed “The Orient Express” for the speed with which he demolished his opponents, was one of the finest players of the 1980s. Not content with winning the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1987, he repeated the feat with a back-to-back championship title in 1988. And he did it with a trap so well laid that this final hand against Erik Seidel was immortalised in the poker movie Rounders… Read more

1989: Phil Hellmuth becomes the youngest ever WSOP champion

Johnny Chan nearly pulled off the historic feat of a WSOP Main Event hat-trick. For a third year in a row, he found himself heads-up after defeating all comers. Even better, he was up against some inexperienced young kid of 24. Unluckily for him, that young man just happened to be Phil Hellmuth, and he was so focused on winning that he’d left a message on his answerphone saying, “You’re talking to the 1989 world champion of poker”. This was the WSOP that propelled “the Poker Brat” to fame. Read more

1995: Barbara Enright is the first woman to reach the WSOP final table

When asked to name a female poker pro, you might immediately think of Annie Duke, Vanessa Selbst, or Liv Boeree. But to players of an older generation, Barbara Enright’s name would roll first off the tongue. As the first (and still only) woman to reach the final table of the WSOP, she paved the way for future female players in what is still a very male-dominated environment. And she would have done better than fifth place, too, if it wasn’t for a painful bad beat… Read more

1997: Stu Ungar wins a historic third WSOP Main Event

Ask any poker player who was the greatest of all time, and there’s a good chance they’ll say Stu Ungar. With a photographic memory that got him banned from blackjack tables, and poker reads so acute he once won a $50,000 WSOP heads-up event by calling with 10-high, Stu “The Kid” Ungar was one of the greatest natural talents ever. But after winning the world championship in 1980 and 1981, he fell prey to drug addiction. His extraordinary story was to have a triumphant conclusion at the 1997 World Series of Poker… Read more

2003: Chris Moneymaker launches the internet poker boom

Was there ever a poker player more aptly named than Chris Moneymaker? In 2003, the accountant and amateur poker player turned a $39 entry to an online satellite tournament into $2.5 million when he won the WSOP Main Event. His victory was the personification of the American Dream that anyone can make it big, and inspired a whole generation of online poker players. Over the next three years, entries to the WSOP Main Event increased tenfold. Read more

2007: Annette Obrestadt becomes the youngest WSOP bracelet winner

Annette Obrestadt was a few days short of her 19^th birthday when she won the World Series of Poker Europe, in the WSOP’s first official bracelet tournament outside America. She was young; she was a woman; she was part of a new breed of aggressive online players who would change the face of poker strategy. Annette Obrestadt once won an online poker tournament playing “blind”, with her cards covered up – but she would need all her resources to triumph over the WSOPE Main Event… Read more

2012: Antonio Esfandiari wins $18m in the Big One for One Drop

The Main Event of the World Series of Poker has traditionally awarded the biggest first prize of all poker tournaments. But a side-event of the WSOP, first held in 2012, dwarfed even these sums. This was the Big One for One Drop, in aid of the water charity set up by the founder of Cirque du Soleil, and the first prize was a record $18 million. Antonio Esfandiari, a former magician, pulled off the greatest trick of his career: making a final table that included Phil Hellmuth, Brian Rast and Sam Trickett disappear. Read more

**In the final part of our series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School revisits the Big One for One Drop of 2012, where a former magician won the biggest prize in poker**

The Main Event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) has traditionally awarded the largest first prize of any poker tournament, peaking at $12m in 2006 and standing at just over $8m in 2016. But a side event, first held in 2012, dwarfed even those sums. Up for grabs was the biggest tournament prize in poker history: $18,346,673.
The event was the Big One for One Drop, a charity dedicated to providing access to clean water for all, set up by Cirque du Soleil founder and keen poker player Guy Laliberté. The buy-in was a record $1m per person, with the WSOP waiving its usual 10% rake and $111,111 from each entry going directly to the charity.
The final table was a Who’s Who of poker, including Phil Hellmuth, Brian Rast, Sam Trickett and Richard Yong. But it was a former magician, Antonio Esfandiari, who emerged the victor.

Who is Antonio Esfandiari?

Antonio Esfandiari is one of the most colourful figures in poker. Born in Tehran, Iran, he moved to California with his family when he was nine. While many magicians develop their interest in childhood, Esfandiari’s curiosity was sparked when working as a waiter, aged 17. He saw a bartender perform a trick, went to a magic shop to find out how it was done, and began to perform his own for extra tips. Soon the tips outgrew his pay check, and he switched to performing magic full-time.
Esfandiari discovered poker at around the same time. His new-found earnings from magic allowed him to play, and the reading skills he learned as a magician allowed him to win. Soon poker became the job, with magic merely a hobby for entertaining players at the poker table – he became best friends with Phil “Unabomber” Laak as a result of their shared fascination for tricks, before either was a famous player.
In 2004 Esfandiari became the youngest ever winner of a WPT event, taking down $1.4 million in the L.A. Poker Classic. His first WSOP bracelet followed a few months later. He was still just 24 years old.

Esfandiari wins the Big One for One Drop

By the time of the Big One for One Drop in 2012, Antonio Esfandiari was an experienced poker pro. He needed to be: as the biggest prize in poker history, with a platinum rather than gold bracelet to match, the Big One for One Drop attracted some of the biggest names in poker.
Coming into the final table, Esfandiari and Sam Trickett both held the largest stacks, and they maintained their lead throughout until just the two of them were left. By this stage, Esfandiari had three times as many chips as the British pro.
Their heads-up battle lasted just 16 hands. On a J-5-5 flop, multiple re-raises took both men all-in: Esfandiari held trips, Trickett a flush draw. Few real diamonds are as valuable as the one Trickett was praying for: the difference between first and second place was more than $8 million. But the magician’s luck held, and it was Trickett’s turn to do a disappearing act.
“From day one I just believed I was going to win this tournament,” Esfandiari said in a post-game interview. “I just saw it. I saw me winning the bracelet.”

Who is Antonio Esfandiari? Poker player profile

Antonio Esfandiari was born Amir Esfandiary in Tehran, Iran, in 1978. His family emigrated to California when he was nine.
He is nicknamed “The Magician”, after his profession before he took up poker.
He is famed for his outlandish prop bets and desire to have fun at the poker table.
He has more than $27 million in live poker tournament earnings
At the 2012 WSOP Antonio Esfandiari won the biggest single prize in poker history: more than $18 million in the Big One for One Drop poker tournament.

**In the ninth of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School recalls how an 18-year-old girl won £1 million**

Annette Obrestadt was just 18 when she won the Main Event, and £1 million, at the first World Series of Poker Europe. It made her the youngest ever bracelet winner – so young, in fact, that it would be more than two years before she was legally allowed to play in Las Vegas. Coming four years after Chris Moneymaker turned $39 into $2.5m at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2003, this striking victory by a young woman over established pros such as Gus Hansen, who finished in tenth place, showed just how much Moneymaker’s win had changed the face of poker.
Moneymaker, more than anyone, was responsible for the boom in online poker. Obrestadt was very much an online player: she had already racked up $800,000 in MTT cashes before entering the WSOPE. In an interview directly after winning the title, Obrestadt summed up why the new breed of internet players were making waves in live play: “I’ve played thousands of tournaments online. Most professionals only play 60 or so live tournaments a year so I think I have an advantage there.”

Who is Annette Obrestadt?

Born in 1988, Annette Obrestadt began playing poker at the age of 15 – hence her screen name, “Annette_15”. While Chris Moneymaker spun up his poker fortune from $39, Obrestadt says she never invested any of her own money at all, building up her poker bankroll initially from freeroll tournaments.
Living in Norway, Obrestadt developed a highly aggressive playing style typical of many Scandinavian players: her other screen name is “The Huntress”. Blessed with a natural talent, she also experimented and worked hard at her poker strategy. She is famous for once winning a tournament playing “blind”, with her cards covered up. She did this to show “just how important it is to play position and to pay attention to the players at the table”.
Her win at the WSOPE was no fluke. Since then she has amassed nearly $4m in live tournament earnings, ranking her second amongst all Norwegian players, male or female.

How Annette Obrestadt crushed the World Series of Poker Europe

The 2007 WSOPE Main Event, held in London’s Casino at the Empire on Leicester Square, was the first time that official gold bracelets had been awarded outside Las Vegas (the WSOP has now expanded to Asia Pacific as well as Europe). Obrestadt worked hard for hers, building her stack up on the final table from just half that of the chip leader. The Scandinavian-heavy final nine made for a lot of aggressive action, but it was the final heads-up poker battle that really counted.
Obrestadt was pitted against John Tabatabai. Their single combat lasted for nearly as many hands as the rest of the final table put together. Finally, Obrestadt got the miracle flop that would clinch her victory: on a flop of 7-6-5, she pushed all-in with top set, while her opponent held two pair and needed runner-runner quads to survive.
With the legal age in Las Vegas being 21, it is likely that Obrestadt’s record as the youngest ever bracelet winner will stand forever.

Who is Annette Obrestadt? Poker player profile

Born in 1988, Annette Obrestadt started playing online poker at the age of 15, under the screen name “Annette_15”.
Before switching to live poker she had won $800,000 in online MTTs, winning one tournament with her cards covered up.
In winning the Main Event of the World Series of Poker Europe in 2007, Annette Obrestadt became the youngest ever bracelet winner.
Her first prize in the WSOPE was £1 million, and she now has nearly $4m in live poker tournament earnings.

Read the eighth of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, and find out how an amateur turned a $39 online satellite into a $2.5m Main Event win
Or come back tomorrow for the last part in our WSOP series.

**In the eighth of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School recalls how an amateur turned a $39 online satellite into a $2.5m Main Event win**

Of all the great moments in the history of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the most transformative for the future of the game as a whole was surely Chris Moneymaker’s victory in 2003. It was a personification of the American Dream that anyone, regardless of their background, can make it big.
Chris Moneymaker entered a $39 online satellite tournament, which led to a $600 satellite, which won him a seat at the Main Event of the WSOP. That $39 investment was to net Chris Moneymaker a first prize of $2.5 million.
That year was also notable for ESPN expanding the coverage and hole-card cameras being introduced on the final table. This truly was the beginning of the internet-fuelled poker boom, with entries to the WSOP Main Event increasing tenfold from 839 in 2003 to 8,773 in 2006. Poker writers now refer to this as “the Moneymaker Effect”.

Who is Chris Moneymaker?

Can there ever have been a poker champion more aptly named than “Moneymaker”? It sounds like an online poker nickname, but in fact his German ancestors made coins, and chose “Moneymaker” as an Anglicisation of their surname “Nurmacher”.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Moneymaker further lived up to his name by studying accounting at university, becoming a comptroller. He was just 27 when he entered the World Series of Poker Main Event. Amazingly, it was his first live poker tournament.
Even so, Chris Moneymaker played well enough on Day One to catch the eye of professional sports handicapper Lou Diamond, who prophetically tipped him as his “dark horse to win the whole tournament”.

Chris Moneymaker knocks out Phil Ivey to make the WSOP final table

Chris Moneymaker did have a stroke of luck to get to the final table. With 10 players left, and holding trip Queens with an Ace kicker, he called Phil Ivey’s all-in bet on the turn only to find himself facing down a full house. A lucky Ace came on the river to change the course of history – sending the amateur to the final table, and denying Phil Ivey his coveted world championship win.
Once there, Chris Moneymaker made up in courage what he lacked in experience. The final table got underway at 2pm, and became heads-up at 12.30am. Moneymaker was pitted against Sammy Farha, and by now had twice his stack. Over the next hour, however, the more experienced pro chipped away at the amateur’s stack until the two were nearly even.
It was then that Chris Moneymaker decided to make his stand.
Both men flopped a flush draw. Moneymaker’s spades were higher, with K7 to Farha’s Q9, but the 9-high flop gave Farha top pair. Both players checked. The turn gave Moneymaker an open-ended straight draw as well as his flush draw, so when Farha now bet out with 300,000, Moneymaker re-raised him to 800,000. Still with top pair and a (lesser) flush draw, Farha called, but he must have felt rattled.

Chris Moneymaker pulls off a historic bluff

The river was a red 3: no possible help to either man. But at this point, sensing weakness, Moneymaker made a huge all-in shove.
Farha tanked. Top pair is not usually a hand you can fold when heads-up. Then again, Moneymaker had bet his tournament life on this hand – would he do that on a bluff? And would an amateur be capable of such daring against a seasoned pro?
Farha eventually folded, leaving his stack fatally crippled at 1.8m to Moneymaker’s 6.6m, and the bluff entered the annals of poker history as one of the most audacious the WSOP has seen.

Who is Chris Moneymaker? Poker player profile

Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1975, Chris Moneymaker was an accountant before turning to poker full-time
Moneymaker turned a $39 online satellite entry into a $2.5m win at the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2003
His autobiography is entitled Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker (2005)
The online poker boom that followed Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP victory has become known as “the Moneymaker Effect”

Why not go back and read part 7 of our 10 part WSOP series which is about only player to have won three Main Event championships.
Or come back tomorrow for part 9.

**In the seventh of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School explains how Stu “The Kid” Ungar battled drug addiction to become “The Comeback Kid”**

There are many who would agree that Stu Ungar was quite simply the best natural poker player of all time. His prowess at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) certainly supports this view. He is the only player to have won three Main Event championships (apart from Johnny Moss, whose first victory was achieved by a vote of his peers, rather than winning a tournament).
When Stu Ungar reached the final table of the WSOP Main Event in 1997, poker fans flocked in such numbers to see if he could win a historic third title that, for the first and only time, the television table was placed in the middle of Fremont Street to allow everyone to crowd round.

Who was Stu Ungar?

Stu Ungar was a card-game prodigy with a photographic memory. His card-counting at blackjack was so good the casinos banned him, and at gin rummy he defeated the man previously renowned as the best player by 86 games to none. In poker he proved equally adept, winning the WSOP in 1980, aged 26, and then again in 1981.
Sadly, addiction got the better of him. In the 1990 Main Event, he was found unconscious from a drug overdose in his hotel on the third day. Even so, he had built up such a commanding stack that he reached the final table anyway: by the time he was blinded out he had placed ninth. In the 1992 WSOP, he sensationally busted out 1990 WSOP champion Mansour Matloubi in a $50,000 heads-up event when he hero-called Matloubi’s river bluff with just 10-high – he had correctly guessed his opponent had had a gutshot draw on the flop, with the board at 3-3-7-K-Q.

Stu Ungar makes the WSOP final table in 1997

Despite having earned an estimated $30 million in his career, Stu Ungar was penniless by the time of the 1997 WSOP. A fellow player staked him the $10,000 buy-in at the very last minute, just before registration closed.
Stu Ungar actually got off to a shaky start: he had been up for 24 hours trying to raise the money, and his tiredness showed. But from Day Two, Ungar put on a powerhouse demonstration of poker strategy and reads that has rarely been bettered. At one stage on Day Two he was seated with four former world champions: Bobby Baldwin, Berry Johnston, Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth. But Ungar was the only one of these men to make it to the final table, with a commanding chip stack that was double that of his nearest competitor.
He showed his mettle early on in the final table when he got the crowd favourite, Ron Stanley, to relinquish the best hand on a big pot when Ungar re-raised the turn and then bluffed the river with air. Even that bet was set up in advance: he had previously shown a hand in which he slow-played top pair, so he knew his bluff would seem plausible. Ungar just kept on swinging until he was left heads-up with more than four times John Strzemp’s stack.
The outcome was never really in doubt. Strzemp was knocked out within six hands.

Stu Ungar, “The Comeback Kid”

In 1980, when Stu Ungar won his first poker world championship, he was nicknamed “The Kid”. After overcoming his demons to win the title for a historic third time, 17 years later, the press dubbed him “The Comeback Kid”.
But though Ungar could win at cards, he couldn’t win his own personal war on drugs. He never could kick the habit for long, and he died the following year.
Stu Ungar himself put it best, when interviewed directly after his 1997 WSOP victory: “There’s nobody that can beat me playing cards. The only one that ever beat me was myself, my bad habits.”

Who is Stu Ungar? Poker player profile

Stu Ungar made poker history when he first won back-to-back WSOP championships in 1980 and 1981, then won again in 1997
First nicknamed “The Kid”, he was thereafter known as “The Comeback Kid”
He is generally regarded as the finest poker and gin rummy player of all time
He had a photographic memory, which saw him banned from playing blackjack
Stu Ungar battled addiction for most of his adult life, and died in 1998 of a drug-related heart condition, aged 45

Read our last WSOP on the only one woman has ever reached the final table of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.
Or come back tomorrow to read about Chris Moneymaker and the online poker boom.

**In the fifth of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School recalls how a young Phil Hellmuth stopped “The Orient Express” in his tracks**

The 1989 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event was meant to be the remarkable story of how Johnny Chan, aka “The Orient Express”, powered his way to an unbeatable third championship title in a row.
He might have got away with it, too, were it not for that pesky kid, Phil Hellmuth…

Who is Phil Hellmuth?

Do you even have to ask? With his gift for self-promotion, backed up by a natural talent sharpened by three decades of playing at the highest levels, Phil Hellmuth might just be the most famous of all poker players – perhaps matched only by Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.
Where would poker be without Phil Hellmuth? In an age in which so many pros are quiet, reserved maths obsessives, Hellmuth is a uniquely colourful figure. His live reads are so well honed that he calls his intuitive style of play “White Magic”. His brashness earned him the nickname “Poker Brat”, one he has embraced as the title of his new autobiography. He has earned more WSOP bracelets than any other player (14 and counting). Nor is he shy of reminding players of that fact: in 2009 he arrived at the WSOP dressed as a Roman Emperor, carried aloft by muscular men and attended by a bevy of beauties.

The 1989 WSOP Main Event

And it all began at the 1989 World Series of Poker. The poker world was preparing to celebrate the incredible “three-peat” victory of Johnny Chan, who was gunning for his third championship title after winning back-to-back Main Events in 1987 and 1988. Instead, The Orient Express hit the buffers and Hellmuth became, at 24, the youngest ever poker world champion.
Phil Hellmuth had knocked out two players in a single hand to get heads-up with Johnny Chan, and so held about twice as many chips as the defending champion. It didn’t last long. Holding pocket 9s, Hellmuth made a sudden outsized bet, moving all-in pre-flop. Johnny Chan barely hesitated before calling the young upstart, and found himself a clear underdog with A7.
It was a victory no one could have predicted – except, strangely, the two finalists themselves. Only a year and half earlier Phil Hellmuth had reassessed his directionless life, and written down a list of goals. They included “Win the Main Event”. Before the tournament, he left a message on his answerphone saying, “You’re talking to the 1989 world champion of poker”.
As for Chan, he had said of Phil Hellmuth in an Esquire interview earlier that year, “That kid, when he learns to rein it in, he’s going to win the Main Event.” This is one time where Chan can’t have been happy to have been proved right.

Who is Phil Hellmuth? Poker player profile

Born in 1964, Phil Hellmuth was the youngest ever winner of the WSOP Main Event, in 1989, and holds a record 14 bracelets
Nicknamed “the Poker Brat” for his outbursts when he suffers a bad beat
Author of three influential books on poker strategy, and a new autobiography, Poker Brat: the Story of the World’s Greatest Poker Player
Famous for saying “If there was no luck I’d win every hand”
Phil Hellmuth’s grand entrances to the World Series of Poker include dressing as a US general, a Roman emperor, and a mixed martial arts fighter

Read the 4th part of our WSOP series about a winning Main Event hand from Johnny Chan that was immortalised in the movie Rounders.
Or come back tomorrow to check out the next part which profiles the only woman to reach the final table at the World Series of Poker.

**In the fourth of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School looks at a winning Main Event hand that was immortalised in the movie Rounders**

One of the best loved and most authentic movies about poker is Rounders (1998). In the final hand, the young poker prodigy (played by Matt Damon) flops a straight, and decides to slow-play it. His bullying Russian opponent (John Malkovich) falls right into his trap, shoving all-in on the river. Matt Damon snap-calls with a smile.
“That son of beech!” explodes the Russian, slamming his cards down on the table. “He trap me!”
What you may not know is that the hand is based on Johnny Chan’s famous winning hand in the World Series of Poker (WSOP), ten years before.

Who is Johnny Chan?

Born in China in 1957, Johnny Chan emigrated with his parents to America in 1968. His parents expected him to follow them into the restaurant business, but he dropped out of studying hotel and restaurant management at 21 to move to Las Vegas with just $300 to his name.
In 1981, Johnny Chan earned the nickname “the Orient Express” for defeating all nine players at the final table of the 1981 America Cup poker tournament in under an hour. He became respected as one of the very finest players of the 1980s, and is still playing today. He is second equal in WSOP bracelets, with 10, and has cashed at the WSOP 45 times.

Johnny Chan defends his WSOP title in 1988

Johnny Chan won the WSOP Main Event in 1987. For most players that would be accolade enough, but Chan was determined to repeat the feat in 1988.
On the final table, Chan ended up heads-up against Erik Seidel. Seidel is himself an excellent player who seems only to improve with age: he has won eight WSOP bracelets. But Chan’s strategy was to use his rival’s self-confidence and aggression against him, and he laid the perfect trap.
Holding J-9 suited, Chan flopped a straight. Seidel had no more than top pair with a weak kicker. Yet when Chan bet, Seidel re-raised. Resisting the temptation to raise again, Chan simply called, with a show of reluctance.
The turn card was a blank. Both men checked, Chan still trapping Seidel into a false sense of security. In those days, the hole cards were not shown to viewers until the turn. The commentator summed up the excitement at the reveal: “Erik Seidel cannot win this hand, and yet he doesn’t know it! Chan is trying to sucker him in!”
When the river card was also a blank, Seidel shoved all-in. Chan snap-called with the absolute nuts, and the rest is both poker and film history.
Amazingly, Johnny Chan ended up heads-up in the WSOP Main Event the next year as well. But the real star of that story is a 24-year-old Phil Hellmuth, who features in the next part in our series…

Who is Johnny Chan? Poker player profile

Born in China in 1957, Johnny Chan moved to America in 1968
Nicknamed “The Orient Express” after he demolished the final table of the 1981 America Cup poker tournament in under an hour
Along with Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan holds 10 WSOP bracelets
His victory over Erik Seidel in the 1988 WSOP Main Event was immortalised in the film Rounders (1998), in which he also had a cameo role
Johnny Chan is famous for keeping an orange beside him at the poker table, supposedly to combat the smell of cigarettes

Read part 3 of our 10 part series on the greatest moment in WSOP history. The third part in our series explores how the tournament phrase “a chip and a chair” was born.
Come back tomorrow to find out how a young Phil Hellmuth stopped “The Orient Express” in his tracks.

**In the third of a 10-part series on the World Series of Poker, the Paul Phua Poker School explores how the tournament phrase “a chip and a chair” was born**

You may have heard the poker expression, “as long as you’ve got a chip and a chair…” It means that no matter how few chips you have left in a poker tournament, you always have a chance. But you may not know that this saying was born at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 1982.
It’s not just the greatest underdog story in poker, but it’s hard to think of a bigger comeback in any sport. It all starts with Jack “Treetop” Straus…

Who was Jack “Treetop” Straus?

Jack Straus, nicknamed “Treetop” due to his imposing 6’6″ frame, was one of the old-school “road gamblers” who would criss-cross Texas in search of a good game. With a fearlessly aggressive playing style, his speciality was heads-up poker, and when he played full ring he was never scared to get all his chips in.
Straus is known for one of the greatest bluffs in poker, during a high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em cash game. Despite being dealt the worst starting hand in poker, 7-2, he bet out, and was rewarded with a flop of 7-3-3 for top pair. Of course he bet again, but his opponent re-raised him: surely a larger pocket pair.
Straus called anyway, and the turn was a 2. Three pair of course is not a poker hand, so this was no help to Straus, but nevertheless he fired out a huge bet. His opponent tanked. What could such a big bet mean? Trips? A house? Now came the speechplay.
“I’ll show you whichever one of my cards you choose if you give me $25,” said Straus.
His opponent couldn’t see the harm in gaining more information, and tossed over a $25 chip. He selected a card, and Straus turned it over: a 2. The genius of this move was that, whichever card his opponent selected, he would think that hole card was paired for a full house. After all, Straus couldn’t be betting big with just two pair, could he? The higher pocket pair reluctantly folded.

The 1982 WSOP Main Event

At the 1982 WSOP Main Event, Jack Straus put his creativity and aggression to good use. On day two, after he’d lost a big hand, he seemed to have been knocked out. But as he was standing up from the table he noticed a single 500 chip hidden under a napkin. It had not been included in Straus’s shove, and he hadn’t announced “all-in”, so he was allowed to sit back down and play.
The next hand was folded round to his big blind. He then doubled up his increased stack. Before long, he had the most chips at the table.
By the end of day two, Jack Straus had 90,000 chips. By the end of day three, he was chip leader with 341,500. Before long, Straus had single-handedly eliminated most of the final table until only he and Dewey Tomko were left.
Their heads-up contest lasted just ten minutes. Straus got it in good with A-10 against Tomko’s A-4. Tomko hit the 4 on the flop, but Straus triumphed when the 10 hit on the river, winning a then record payout of $520,000. And all from a single chip and a chair.

Who was Jack “Treetop” Straus? Poker player profile

In 1982, Jack Straus came back from a single chip to win the World Series of Poker, giving birth to the saying “a chip and a chair”
He was nicknamed “Treetop” on account of being six and half foot tall
One of the old-school “road gamblers”, Jack Straus once said: “If they had wanted you to hold on to money they’d have made it with handles”
A keen big-game hunter, Jack Straus wore a lion’s paw inscribed with the motto: “Better a day as a lion than one hundred years as a lamb”
In 1988, aged 58, Jack Straus died as he had lived, sitting at a high-stakes cash table, having suffered an aortic aneurysm

Read part 2 of our 10 part World Series of Poker mini series and discover how 10-2 or the ‘Doyle Brunson Hand’ got it’s name.
Or come back tomorrow for Johnny Chan’s winning hand that was immortalised in the movie ‘Rounders’.

**In the second of a 10-part series, the Paul Phua Poker School recalls how 10-2 became the luckiest hand in World Series of Poker history**

With the sheer number of hands that have been played during all the successive World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournaments, you would think that anything could happen. But of all the unlikely strokes of fortune over nearly 50 years of the WSOP, there cannot be anything to rival Doyle Brunson taking down the championship two years running – with the very same lucky hand!

Who is Doyle Brunson?

Doyle Brunson, nicknamed “Texas Dolly” or “The Godfather of Poker”, is one of the last of the old poker greats still standing – or at least sitting, since you’ll often see him in a motorised chair these days. He’s 83 years old, and has been plagued for most of that time by the bad knee that ended his youthful dream of becoming a professional basketball player.
Basketball’s loss is poker’s gain. Brunson has won 10 WSOP bracelets, and his poker strategy book Super/System, originally self-published in 1978, became the bible for a whole generation of poker players. In 2006, after Super/System 2 was published, Brunson was voted by Bluff Magazine the most influential force in the world of poker.

1976: Doyle Brunson wins the WSOP Main Event

In the 1976 WSOP Main Event, Doyle Brunson was heads-up with a player called Jesse Alto. Unlike Brunson, Alto was a keen amateur rather than a professional: his day job was as a car dealer. As a result, he had not fully learned to keep cool in tight spots, and Brunson said he was looking to exploit that weakness.
Jesse Alto bet out with A-J, an excellent starting hand when heads-up. Brunson called with 10-2 suited. The flop came A-J-10, giving Alto two pair. Brunson went all-in with the weaker hand, Alto of course called.
The story of the 1976 WSOP could have been about how an amateur car dealer bested the world’s top pros… but the poker gods decided otherwise. In one of the worst bad beats in Main Event history, Brunson caught runner-runner 2s on the turn and river to make a full house!

1977: Doyle Brunson wins the WSOP Main Event again – with the same hand!

They say lightning never strikes twice. Perhaps it does in Texas. The very next year, Doyle Brunson was defending his title heads-up against Gary “Bones” Berland when he looked down at 10-2 – again. Berland was dealt 8-5.
Yet again Brunson found himself behind when the flop of 10-8-5 gave him a pair, and his opponent two pair. Yet again, the 2 hit on the turn to give Brunson two pair, and this time he was ahead. When Berland pushed all-in, Brunson gladly called. Incredibly, Brunson yet again made a full house on the river when a 10 hit, and he was crowned world champion for the second year in a row.

The “Doyle Brunson hand”

There are many colourful names for different poker hands. Aces are nicknamed “bullets” or “pocket rockets”; pocket Kings are nicknamed “cowboys”; J-5 is known as “Jackson Five” or just “Motown”.
To this day, if you show 10-2, another player around the table is likely to nod wisely and say, “Ah, the ‘Doyle Brunson hand’”.

Who is Doyle Brunson? Poker player profile

Born in 1933, Doyle Brunson is nicknamed “Texas Dolly” or “the Godfather of Poker”
He is second equal in WSOP bracelets, with 10
He won back-to-back WSOP Main Events in 1976 and 1977
Doyle Brunson is the author of several books on poker including Super/System and Super/System 2

Read the first blog in our World Series of Poker mini series on how the World Series of Poker was born, and how “the Grand Old Man of Poker” earned his name.

Or come back tomorrow and read about how the tournament phrase “a chip and a chair” was born at the WSOP.

What language does the word poker originate from?

Finding out about the origins of poker is a bit like researching into genealogy. You have to work backwards, from the present (and the things we think we know) to the past (where the secrets really lie). We now think of Texas Holdem poker as an all American pastime. It’s where many of the best players and poker stars are, and where many of the big casinos are that poker is famous for being played at. And one of the country’s 50 states gives the name of its most popular variant of poker games – Texas Holdem. But the first records of a game called poker being played in what is now the United States is nowhere near Las Vegas, or one of the big casino cities we know today. In fact the first evidence we can find of a game like poker being played in the US is in New Orleans, in what was then the Territory of Louisiana. That’s the earliest evidence of poker being played, and the trail stops there. That doesn’t mean though that Poker is all-American. That’s because there was another game that was brought over to New Orleans by settlers from France, called poque. And that game was being played at the same time in the same place as the early hands of poker. Poque was similar to what we now know as poker – in how it is played, and also obviously in the name. It involves rounds of betting, community cards, and a show of cards at the end. So it seems that poker is, in fact, as American as Tarte Tatin, not apple pie!
The French, though, can’t claim all the credit with total certainty. There is no definitive link between modern poker games and poque. Just similarities. And to add to the mystery, there’s another country that has a pretty good claim to have had at least some influence. The German game of pochspeil, which at the time would have meant something like “bluff game”. The French game may even have derived from the German one, given how close the countries are to each other. So we can throw an Apple Strudel into the mix too!
We can never be a 100% certain where the name come from, but the French seem to have the best claim. Alongside the Statue of Liberty, and the federal constitution, poker is another American icon with a French origin.