Bigger Deal

Prologue In 1978, the year I first visited Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, Bobby "the Owl" Baldwin beat a record field of forty-two players to the title of world champion and a handsome first prize of $270,000. A decade later, in 1988, the first time I played in the main event myself, there were all of 167 starters and the title was worth $700,000. By 2005, when I take part again at the beginning of this book, the field has risen to nearly six thousand. The first prize is $7.5 million and all nine players who reach the final table become dollar millionaires. By the book's end and the 2006 World Series there are 8,773 starters, myself again included, vying for a first prize of $12 million -- the richest, by some distance, in all sport. The 2006 prize pool of more than $150 million made the thirty-seventh World Series of Poker, staged over seven weeks in July and August, the biggest sporting event in the history of the planet. No fewer than 44,500 players took part in at least one of its forty-five events. Thanks to a combination of television and the Internet, poker was booming as never before since being introduced to the fledgling United States by French sailors landing in Louisiana in the 1820s. And now some interested parties really do call poker a sport, rather than the game most of us have long considered it. Thirty-six years ago, when the wily Benny Binion hosted the first World Series at his downtown Horseshoe Casino, the field of runners numbered a mere six, the prize purse $30,000. Today, in terms of participants and prizes, the WSOP No Limit Hold 'em Championship is the world's largest single competitive event, growing at an annual rate of more than 200 percent for the three years 2002-2005. The prize money -- $82,512,162 (almost 50 million) in 2006 for the main event alone -- dwarfs that of any other global sporting championship. The not insignificant difference from all other sports is that this prize purse is paid by the players. The romance of the WSOP's world-title event lies in the fact that ambitious amateurs can take on the top professionals on equal terms. All you need to play is the $10,000 entry fee -- or, these days, not even that. Thanks to the democracy of cyberspace, at least two-thirds of the giant fields of recent years have won their way there via online tournaments for as little as $5. The world championships of 2003 and 2004 were both won by players who had earned their $10,000 seats online for $40 or less, which they proceeded to parlay into millions. At no other sport is the opportunity for amateurs to compete against professionals so readily available -- at such small prices and for such potentially huge rewards, even without any corporate sponsorship. The 2005 winner, an Australian chiropractor turned mortgage broker named Joe Hachem, put up his $10,000 entry fee himself. But his $7.5 million prize money for a week's work was many more times that of Tiger Woods for winning the Open golf championship the same weekend or Roger Federer's for conquering Wimbledon earlier that month. This is a radically different world from the one I chronicled almost two decades ago in 1988 and 1989, when I spent a year attempting to earn my living as a professional poker player. It's a long story; but it all really happened by mistake. As a dedicated recreational player in my Tuesday Night Game in London, I had been traveling to Vegas each summer as a journalist, and an envious railbird, for ten years before I surprised myself by winning a seat in the 1988 main event via a $1,000 "satellite" (or heat). When I returned to London with my then girlfriend, the American novelist Cindy Blake, I was so insufferably excited by the experience that she suggested (with some feeling) that I get it all out of my system by hitting the road on the pro poker tour -- and writing an account of my adventures. So I played in tournaments from Malta and Morocco tHolden, Anthony is the author of 'Bigger Deal', published 2008 under ISBN 9780743294836 and ISBN 0743294831.