Rick's Gambling Guide

The World Series Of Poker

The World Series of Poker (commonly abbreviated as the WSOP) is an annual poker tournament, held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 2009 World Series of Poker took place from May 27 to July 15. Founded in 1970, the WSOP has grown from an informal meeting of famous poker players to a competitive game with thousands of participants, consisting of both professionals and amateurs. The most famous portion of the WSOP is a $10,000 no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, known as the “Main Event”. The winner of the Main Event is considered to be the World Champion of Poker for that year.

The tournament was created by Benny Binion, founder of the Horseshoe Casino. In 1970, he invited notable poker players, such as Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss, and others, to come to his casino to play a variety of poker variants over the course of a few days. At this meeting, there was no formal tournament, and the champion was chosen by a vote of those present. From this, Binion saw the event’s potential, and organized the WSOP into the format it’s known for today. Three years later, the 1973 WSOP was televised by CBS, and slowly grew in popularity, attracting hundreds of professionals from around the United States in the coming years.

While the tournament remained popular among professionals, it failed to captivate the public at large. The rise of online poker websites in the late 90s provided a way for organizers to generate interest in the WSOP. In an attempt to draw public attention to the tournament, online poker sites established tournaments known as WSOP satellite tournaments, whose winners automatically qualified for the Main Event. In 2003, Chris Moneymaker, a comptroller from Nashville, Tennessee, qualified for the Main Event through a $39 satellite tournament on PokerStars.com, and went on to win the Main Event, earning $2.5 million. This was the first time the tournament had been won by an amateur with no prior professional experience. The allure of Moneymaker’s rags to riches story attracted an unprecedented number of amateurs to compete, and in 2006, the Main Event had 8,773 participants, the largest in the history of the tournament. Prior to the last two years, the Main Event ran from beginning to end during the WSOP. Now, the final nine players come back to Las Vegas in November to finish the tournament. Because of this, those players are known as the “November Nine.”

Since the early days of the World Series of Poker, the winners of each tournament have been awarded a bracelet. Today, these bracelets are designed by the Swiss watchmaking company Corum, and are valued at thousands of dollars. Earning a WSOP bracelet is considered to be one of the highest achievements in the world of professional poker, and only a small group of poker players have earned more than one. Phil Hellmuth tops them all, with a total of eleven bracelets, earning his most recent one in 2007.