| World
Series of Poker History
The first World
Series of Poker event took place at Binon
Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas 1970. But the
founder Benny Binion got the idea 20 years
earlier. In 1949 he was approached by the
Nick “the Greek” Dandolos. The
Greek, who was a gambler from New York, wanted
to play real high stakes no-limit poker against
a single opponent. Binion agreed to arrange
the game, with the stipulation that it would
be played in front of an audience.
Benny only knew one guy that
was up for the challenge and he called his
old friend Johnny Moss. Moss broke up from
a two day poker game and flew straight to
Las Vegas, shook hand with the Greek and sat
down to play. The game came to last five months
and drew big crowds to the small down town
casino. It is said that the Greek lost about
2 million dollars to Moss. And in the end
he arose from the table with the famous words
“Mr. Moss, I have to let you go.”
He then went upstairs and slept for two days
straight.
Inspired by the big attention
that the event got, Benny Binion decided to
try to re-create it in 1970. He invited some
of the best poker players in the world to
come to Las Vegas – the World Series
of Poker was born. The first year seven players
entered the competition and Johnny Moss became
the champion, a feat that he repeated the
following year. Nobody could then have guessed
how big the event eventually would become.
The WSOP started to grow in
the beginning of the Eighties, when satellites
with lower buy-ins where introduced. This
meant that even players that could not come
up with the entry fee of $10,000 had a chance
to play in the event. And the numbers of players
that participate have continued to grow.
In 2005, 5,619 players
entered the main event, more than twice as
many as the year before. And it became by
far the biggest poker event in the world with
a first price of 7.5 million dollars. An explanation
to this is satellites on the Internet. A lot
of poker
sites offer satellites to the WSOP and
it is even possible to qualify through free
rolls. So today anyone with a computer and
a bit of luck has the chance to play in the
big one. Time to hone your
online
poker skills, in other words.
|
