I still love poker tournaments, even after playing in more than 900 of them in the 1990s alone; I enjoy every one that I play in. The event that really fires me up, though, is the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The WSOP is where legends and champions are made; it is the poker world's world championship. (Appendix 2 talks about playing in a WSOP tournament.)
In golf there are four major tournaments, but in poker the series of events constituting the WSOP carries so much prestige that it is in effect the U.S. Open, the Masters, the British Open, and the PGA all rolled into one!
With 643 players putting up $10,000 each for the WSOP championship event of 2002, creating a prize pool of $6.43 million, the money alone almost matches the prestige of winning the event. The investment banker Robert Varkonyi took home the first prize of $2 million; the second-place finisher, Julian Gardener, had to settle for only $1 million! For a lot of players, this is life-changing money, and so it isn't surprising that a lot of poker players covet the money more than the title. I'm not one of them: I love the title more than the money! The title brings with it a lifetime of recognition and prestige. The winner is forever called a world champion of poker, and his or her picture will go up on the Wall of Champions forever (at both of the Horseshoe Casinos in Las Vegas and Tunica, Mississippi). You can see the Wall of Champions at PokerPages.com.
In 1970 Las Vegas Benny Binion started the WSOP, at his Horseshoe Casino, and called it poker's world championships. It has been poker's world championship ever since, and it has grown in stature and popularity each year.
When you win the WSOP, you are no longer just a poker player but rather a world champion. This distinction is nice, as my wife found out when she searched for residency programs back in the early 1990s. When asked about her husband's occupation, she would say, "He's a world champion of poker." I'm sure that this sounded more interesting and prestigious than, "He's a professional poker player" or "He plays poker for a living!"
Every year in late April, the best poker players in the world (and a lot of wannabes) gather at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas for roughly 25 to 33 WSOP events (the precise number changes from year to year), culminating in the "big one." The "big one" is the $10,000 buy-in Championship Event that ESPN, the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel, and other television networks show up to cover every year. The lowest buy-in event at the WSOP currently is set at $1,500. If you plan to attend the WSOP and play every event, make sure that you bring $100,000 with you! These 30 days (the "big one" alone is five days long) are undoubtedly the most exciting in poker, every year, and by far the most lucrative. For more about the WSOP and other prestigious poker events, go to Appendix 3.
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