poker trivia Archives - Paul Phua Poker

**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.

**With the results now in of Mike Noori’s prop bet to eat $1,000 of McDonald’s in just 36 hours, Paul Phua lists five more poker prop bets that were even crazier**

In the first part of my top 10, I wrote that poker player Mike Noori would be attempting to eat $1,000 of McDonald’s food in just 36 hours for a prop bet. The results of the weekend’s food-fest are in, and… he failed. To be fair, most people thought it was physically impossible!
Mike Noori entered the event in good spirit, dressed up as McDonald’s character the Hamburglar, and Tweeting video clips and updates as @McHamburgler1k. However, the writing was on the wall when he Tweeted: “10 hours in, $90 worth of food consumed. Mental state = shaky”. The final Tweet conceding defeat said that it had been “a fun time” and that the event had raised $14k for charity.
Will poker players go to any lengths for a prop bet? Judge for yourself, with the final five entries in my top 10, below.

Ashton Griffin and the ultra marathon

Poker players don’t always take the greatest care of themselves, which makes Ashton Griffin’s prop bet feat particularly impressive. In 2011, he claimed he could run 70 miles on a treadmill within 24 hours, and got enough people interested in the action to have $300,000 riding on success. Griffin was just 22, and hugely fit; he must have known he could do it, because he went out partying the night before his physical ordeal. Despite concerns for his health – his own parents turned up halfway through to plead with him to stop – he completed the 70 miles with 45 minutes to spare. Talk about “running good”!

Dan Bilzerian and the Vegas bike challenge

You might more readily associate Dan Bilzerian with private jets than bicycles, but the poker-playing playboy also completed an impressive physical challenge for a prop bet. He was bet $600,000 that he couldn’t cycle from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in less than 48 hours. Bilzerian had hardly touched a bicycle in years, so he left nothing to chance. He says he spent nearly $150,000 on preparing for the feat of endurance, including getting coaching from Lance Armstrong. In the end, it wasn’t even close: Bilzerian aced it in just 33 hours.

Joe Sebek and the face tattoos

Many prop bets involve tattoos, or haircuts. After being eliminated from the 2002 WSOP Main Event by Robert Varkonyi, Phil Hellmuth said he would shave his head if Varkonyi went on to win. He did, and Hellmuth honoured the bet. But the one the players likely regret most was a “last longer” bet between Joe Sebok, Jeff Madsen, and Gavin Smith: the loser had to get tattooed with the others’ faces. Sebok is the one with a permanent ink reminder on his skin of both men, while Jeff Madsen, who busted out next, “only” had to have a tattoo of Gavin Smith.

Ted Forrest, Mike Matusow and the crash diet

In 2008, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow won a $100,000 bet from Ted Forrest by losing 60lbs in a year. Two years later, the tables were turned: this time it was Forrest who had to get down to a trim 140lbs, by losing 48lbs. Forrest bet $50,000 at 10:1 he could do it in just four months, and another $100,000 at 20:1 he could do it in two. Two months to lose 40lbs is a tall order, but with $2 million riding on his crash diet, Forrest literally starved himself for the last ten days and made it just before the shorter deadline.

John Hennigan and the exile to Iowa

One of the most telling of all prop bet stories is told by Howard Lederer. Poker player John Hennigan was once bet that he couldn’t spend a quiet six weeks in casino-free Des Moines, Iowa. Some say the bet was $50,000, some say it was $100,000, but it certainly sounds like an easy enough bet to win. Hennigan even said he was looking forward to working on his golf. But after just two days he bought out of the bet and returned sheepishly to Vegas. It seems like the only prop bet a dedicated gambler can’t possibly win is a bet not to gamble!

Poker player Mike Noori’s bet to supersize himself on McDonald’s this weekend is part of a long tradition of outrageous prop bets. From Paul Ivey to Dan Bilzerian, Paul Phua picks out 10 favourites

Starting from today (Friday May 19), poker player Mike Noori has just 36 hours in which to eat $1,000 of McDonald’s food. Many people believe it cannot be done, estimating that he will need to consume about 70,000 calories – the recommended daily amount is less than 3,000! Others say it can: hundreds of thousands of dollars have by now been wagered on the outcome by poker players.
And why is Mike Noori putting his body through this ordeal? Because he was challenged to do so in a prop bet.
Some poker players will gamble on just about anything: whether it’s as small as what the next woman to enter the room will be wearing, or as big as eating several weeks’ worth of food in 36 hours! The most outrageous of these prop bets make great stories. Here are just ten of them, starting with some old-timers:

Titanic Thompson and the golf ball

Titanic Thompson, who hosted the very first World Series of Poker, is one of the most famous gamblers of all time. Sky Masterson, the hero of the musical Guys and Dolls, was based on him. He was no fool: when Titanic Thompson made a prop bet, he always had an angle. He would first secretly count all the watermelons in a truck and later wager, during a seemingly casual conversation with bystanders, that he could guess the exact number. Another time he bet he could throw a walnut over a building, having first secretly weighted it with lead. And when he bet he could drive a golf ball 500 yards, further than any golf pro had managed at that time, he found no shortage of takers for this seemingly impossible feat. But he simply waited till winter, then drove the ball, bouncing, over a frozen lake!

Amarillo Slim and the ping pong battle

Amarillo Slim was one of the great old-school poker players, who won the first of his four WSOP bracelets in 1972. He, too, would bet on almost anything. Perhaps his most famous prop bet was when he challenged Bobby Riggs, a former tennis champ, to a table tennis match. Slim’s one condition was that he could choose the paddles they used. He showed up with two frying pans, having secretly practised with them for months beforehand. He won the match. He successfully repeated the trick years later against a Taiwanese ping-pong champion, though this time his weapon of choice was Coca-Cola bottles!

Brian Zembic and his 38C breast implants

A magician and high-stakes gambler, Brian Zembic was famous for his bizarre prop bets: he lived in a box for a week and in a bathroom for another week. For another bet he slept the night in Central Park with $20,000 on his person. But one prop bet in particular made the headlines. In 1996, for a $100,000 bet, he agreed to have breast implants – 38C, to be precise – and keep them for a year. He even won the $4,500 cost of the operation from a cosmetic surgeon at backgammon. Not only did Zembic go through with it, he kept the implants for two decades. It was only last year that he appeared on the reality TV show, Botched, saying he had finally decided to have them removed.

Antonio Esfandiari and the lunges

What is it with magicians? Poker pro Antonio Esfandiari is also a former magician, and one of the most entertaining people you could share a card table with. His willingness to take a prop bet is legendary, though he often lives to regret it: he once swore off eating bread for a year, but cracked after a few minutes; a bet to remain celibate for a year was cancelled after nine days. But the prop bet that made the headlines, for all the wrong reasons, was one where for 48 hours he was not allowed to walk, only to lunge forward (going down on one knee then the other). It caused him so much pain that at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, rather than face going to the toilet, he made use of an empty water bottle at the table, and was promptly disqualified for “breach of tournament etiquette”. To Antonio Esfandiari’s credit, he offered up a sincere public apology for taking things too far, and donated his $50,000 winnings from the prop bet to charity.

Phil Ivey and the $150,000 steak

Phil Ivey is another player who is never afraid to take a big bet. His golf course wagers with Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu are the stuff of legend, and he famously had a $5 million wager on whether he could win two WSOP bracelets in two years (despite his 10 bracelets overall, he only managed one bracelet in that period). But his craziest prop bet was when Tom Dwan challenged him to go vegetarian for a year. Phil Ivey stood to take down $1 million if he could swear off meat, something he had been thinking of doing anyway. But in the event, Phil Ivey said, he was too busy to work out how to eat healthily, and found eating pasta three times a day affected his poker. So he bought out of the bet after just nine days. The cost of that first juicy steak? $150,000…
Read part two of this Top 10, along with the eagerly awaited result of this weekend’s McDonald’s prop bet.

I know a lot of my readers are amateur players, practising at home to perfect their game so they can place bigger bets and play bigger tables.

Paul Phua gallery image 9 — deck of cards

For that reason, a lot of the stuff on my website is given over to advice on strategy and tactics of play. However, there is one important aspect of poker I haven’t discussed yet – the cards themselves!

The deck you use to play poker won’t necessarily make a huge difference to your success at the game, but I thought it might be interesting for me to tell you a bit about the different types of card deck out there, what brands are being used by pros in casinos, and which might be best for your home play.
A standard deck has 52 cards – a tradition that has been around for more than 500 years. There are more than 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different outcomes to the order of shuffle of the 52 cards. The fact that number has 67 zeros means you are extremely unlikely to get the same arrangement twice.
In a casino, it’s pretty standard practice to have more than one deck of cards to hand – this is a good idea in any poker game because if one deck gets damaged or marked, you can switch to the back-up. A marked deck can give an advantage to any player who can spot the marks. In poker rooms, the two decks will usually be two different colours so they are easily distinguished. Most of the cards you buy online will come in sets of two decks and have these contrasting back colours.
For a game at home, I would recommend changing deck every two hours or so. That’s because even an undamaged deck can become marked with fingerprints, or food and drink stains – common for games at home.

However, if a card becomes visibly damaged you should change it immediately. Players can track the damaged card. If you’re hosting a mini-tournament make sure if that you have a couple of packs per table.

Quite often in professional games, a player might ask for a “new setup”, which is them asking if the decks can be changed. Usually this is because they feel they have had a bad run with the deck of cards currently in use, and want to change their luck with a new pack. I am quite superstitious so I understand – but it can slow the game down quite a bit if you are changing deck every other hand!

When you are thinking about which cards to buy it can be quite overwhelming – there are so many brands and types of deck that you can buy online.

The two basic types of playing cards are 100% plastic cards and paper cards which have then been coated in plastic.
Casinos will always use the 100% plastic ones – and these are the type I prefer to play with. However, coated cards are the more common – they are the sort you will find at a supermarket. However, they are not durable enough for sustained play, and get marked or scuffed much more easily than plastic ones. So if you are going to play quite a bit of poker with your friends, I would go for the more expensive but better value 100% plastic cards.
Professionals use them. Casino dealers like them because they deal nicely and slide smoothly across the table. At a pro-table a dealer will usually use a machine to shuffle the deck, but at home these plastic cards shuffle nicely in your hands and carry a good weight.
It’s not too hard to find plastic cards online, and you can even find the same brands as they use in professional tournaments – which can be useful practice if you are working your way up to your first competition! The brands used most often in casinos are Kem, Copag, Gemaco and Modiano. Kem are probably the most popular because they are used on the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.
One thing a lot of people ask is whether there are different rules for a standard size or design of cards in different countries, but in my experience the international standard is 63.5mm X 88.9mm with regular denomination, suit, and court cards.
But, as I said before – the cards should be your tool to win. It’s useful to have a couple of good decks, but if you are going to invest in something to improve your game, it should be your time.

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.

The diamond suit in a pack of cards is thought to have evolved from another shape in use over 500 years ago in France.

Playing cards are a lot older than the game of poker, almost a thousand years older, and they originated in China. But because of trading routes like the silk road, cards made their way to the middle east and then to Europe by the middle of the last millennium, if not earlier than that. They came via Egypt. Swords, cups, coins and polo-sticks were the suits used in Egypt, and a lot of countries in Europe used some of those suits, and still do. But the French chose differently.
Traditional French playing cards still have these four suits – pike heads, hearts, clover, and paving tiles. And as you read these, you can see how close they are to the suits in the international deck of cards that is in use nowadays. Pike heads became spades in the British/American deck. Spades coming from the Spanish word spado meaning sword, so similar to pikes. Hearts remained hearts, so no explanation needed. The design of the clover has been kept for the suit we now know as clubs. But the name clubs refers to the suit bastoni or bastos still used in Spanish and Italian decks, which actually still depicts a club. So clubs is a hybrid of French and Italian/Spanish. The last of the four suits is the hardest to explain. Paving tiles were indeed rhombus shaped in those days, unlike nowadays when they tend to be square or rectangle. And nowadays, because of the playing card that came to be known as diamonds, we associate a diamond shape with a rhombus too. But we still don’t know why the card known as paving tile came to be known as a diamond. Because hundreds of years ago there wasn’t that association between the rhombus shape and the diamond precious stone. The stone was 3D, a hugely complex shape. A mystery. If you have an idea why – get in touch!

Paul Phua loves poker games, but the first card games he ever played were traditional Chinese ones at home with his family. One of the most popular card games in China is called Dou Di Zhu.

In China, card games exist in two parallel worlds. One world uses the Anglo-American deck of cards, and plays games known globally, such as the poker games we play in casinos. In the other world, though, you find decks of cards with different shapes, different characters, different numbers of cards, and different games to the ones played in homes and casinos across the West. There are also games that take something from both worlds. One of those games is called Dou Di Zhu, which translates literally as fighting, or fight the landlord. It has 54 cards, and can be played using a traditional Anglo-American deck (you’ll need the two jokers), but it doesn’t have to be – there are also special Dou Di Zhu decks. It’s one of the most popular card games in China, and one that Paul saw played at home when he was young.
A bit like learning how to play poker, it’s both easy to pick up, but can take a very long time before you get good at it – there are lots of permutations of winning hands, and they can be made up of different numbers of winning cards. Unlike Texas Holdem poker, you have to play it with a set number of players. The most common version is played with 3 people – two who take on the role of the peasant, and one who takes on the role of the landlord. The landlord, fittingly, has slightly more cards (20), than the two peasants (who both have 17).
Its name comes from a period in Chinese history where landlords were considered to be evil characters, profiteering at the expense of the poor peasants. That being said, players at the start of the game have to bid to have the privilege of playing the role of the landlord. If you aren’t successful in that, or don’t even try to bid, you have to take the role of the peasant.
Though it started off in just one province of Hubei, it’s now wildly popular. Millions of players play the game on social media. There are tournaments in the real world too, with the winners claiming large pots and fame. If you go to China, and want to learn something different to your normal Texas Holdem poker game, be sure to learn the game of Fight the Landlord before you go.
For more information on this game and how it plays, please read the Wikipedia article on Dou dizhu

Poker chips are now almost always plastic with ridges in them to allow them to be stacked easily on top of each other. However, that wasn’t always the most popular material.

In the 19^th century, poker games weren’t always played with chips. Stakes were raised often with material that had some intrinsic value like gold and so represented a certain amount of money. However, the need for standardisation in a game that was getting more and more popular was obvious. Hence the arrival of the commercially made poker chip whose value people could recognise from town to town.
The first poker chips used in Louisiana in the 19^th century though were made of various materials and they were made from a mixture of all sorts of different things – like ivory, bone, wood for example – and a clay that held it together. Later on in the 19^th century, those former materials were got rid of, leaving chips that were made purely from clay. That was the case until half way through the last century. From after the Second World War, you began to see other things mixed in with the clay to make the chips more durable. Nowadays you only see clay as part of a chip in casinos, and even then casinos often use a ceramic material for them. It is easier to print words and designs on a ceramic chip than it is on a clay one, so you can understand why they are popular. Clay composite chips are much more expensive and labour intensive to make than the plastic chips that are found everywhere else outside of casinos. This of course does not hold for people who play poker online! But for the purists and lovers of tradition – a clay chip is still the only way to go!

Why does the Ace of Spades often have the manufacturer’s logo on it?

In Texas Holdem poker, the suits have the same value as each other. So a straight flush 45678 of hearts has exactly the same ranking as the same hand in spades. In many card games though, the spades are the highest ranking suit. And therefore the Ace of spades is the highest ranking card out of the 52 standard ones in the deck. While this does not hold in Texas Holdem poker games, this is true in Bridge for example, one of the most popular card games in the English speaking world. It’s use in popular culture – songs, and the Second World War when soldiers put the card in the side of their helmets to indicate good luck – just carried on that perception. It’s the highest value card in many games, so you are lucky if you have been dealt it in the casino.
But the Ace of spades isn’t important for just that reason. It’s also the card that has traditionally carried the manufacturer’s logo on it. The reason for this goes back to the time of the reign of James 1^st of England (who was also James 6^th of Scotland) in the early 17^th century. He introduced a new tax on playing cards, and decided that the Ace of spades should carry a logo showing the maker of the pack. This was proof that the tax had been paid. So it was lucky for both soldiers in the 20^th century, and kings in the 17^th!

When you are in the casino at the beginning of a poker game, and you have lots of chips, the blinds are something you hardly notice. Towards the end of a poker night, especially if things aren’t going so well and your chip pile is lower than you’d like it to be, or the blind bets are increasing in size, then the blind can really eat into your stack.

Some poker games have antes – forced bets. But Texas Holdem doesn’t, meaning you can fold your cards without betting. Texas Holdem poker does have something called blinds though. They are another type of forced bet, but this time before you have been dealt your cards. Like antes, they exist so that there is a cost to playing, so the poker games don’t go on and on with players just waiting to be dealt a great hand. Paul Phua thinks that the blind keeps the momentum up, and ensures the game of poker finishes within a reasonable time frame – especially since the blinds often increase in value during a game of Texas Holdem to speed things up even further.

There are mainly two blinds in Texas Holdem – the big and small blind, but there can sometimes be three players who have to make them.

The name comes from the fact that players are being asked to bet without seeing their hands. They are betting blind, with no knowledge of the hand’s worth. So in the casino, whether you hold a 2 and a 3 unsuited, or a pair of aces – before you see your hand it’s all the same.
Paul Phua says the blind also marks potential poker strategy. Depending on your position around the poker table in a casino, or a social poker night where the dealer changes as the “button” moves from player to player, you will have to give certain blinds. Being in the small blind spot on a poker table is a disadvantage because you will be the first to act in every round after the flop. But Paul Phua’s poker tip is to remember never feel committed to a pot simply because you have paid your blind, especially in Texas Holdem, and not be afraid to enter a pot if you have a strong enough hand.