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#752 – WSOP 2009 #10 – Ghost Series #1 – 39 Champions, Part I

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[Ghost Series are my posts devoted to the history of the World Series, which intrudes on the present all the time, all over the place, in the most unpredictable ways.]

Not to sound jaded, but I thought I was beyond being awestruck by anything I saw in poker. My knowledge of tournament poker covers its entire history and, short of seeing Johnny Moss, Sailor Roberts, Jack Keller, and Jack Straus playing No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven, nothing is really new to me.

Wrong.

I actually got goose-bumps on Sunday when I watched the three tables comprising the Champions Invitational. Even though these are just poker players and most of them will run into each other throughout the Series, if you have any sense of history, you have to be impressed by all of them together in one place. These men are part of an exclusive club. Each can call himself World Champion without contradiction or dissent. Their common victory was a defining moment – usually THE defining moment – in their lives.

Jeffrey Pollack referred to the twenty-one living champions in attendance as “the Mount Rushmore of poker” (though he was quick to credit Harrah’s communication director Seth Palansky with the title) and I dare someone to accuse him of overstatement.

Here is my super-fast tour of the thirty-three Champions, personalized when it was possible:

* Johnny Moss (1970, 1971, 1974) – deceased

I got to play $20-$40 with Moss at the Horseshoe once in the early Nineties. He was talkative to all the people who came to the table to watch him, but his accent was thick enough to require a translator.

I asked Doyle Brunson, though he was too young to have first-hand knowledge, what he thought really went down during the alleged Moss/Nick the Greek game of 1949 (or 1950 or 1951). He said, “The reports are very accurate about it. They played for two, three months. Moss finally broke him, then Moss went to the craps tables and lost it all.”

* Amarillo Slim (1972) – present

What can I say about Slim that he hasn’t already said about himself? Howard Lederer told me the first poker book he ever read was Slim’s PLAY POKER TO WIN, originally published in 1973. Said Howard: “I remember the first poker book I ever read was a tall-tales book by Amarillo Slim, just kind of like talking about playing the big game and playing deuce-to-seven no-limit draw and hearing about this Texas Dolly guy, Treetops.”

* Puggy Pearson (1973) – deceased

Ted Forrest told me that when he was on the way up, he played a bunch of $75-$150 OEOB with Puggy. He said Puggy would juggle all those $25-chips as he was tossing them into the pot that he would more than occasionally short the pot by a quarter. And he did it without shame, no matter how many times they caught him. “He just thought he was entitled to do that.”

* Sailor Roberts (1975) – deceased

Most of what I know about Roberts is from Brunson’s and Slim’s brief mention of him as part of their partnership in the Texas Road games of the late 1950s. I know from Gary Cartwright’s DIRTY DEALING that Roberts was one of the pros who attached himself to Jimmy Chagra when he was playing big and betting big in Vegas while awaiting his trial before Judge “Maximum John” Wood in Texas. I’d love to learn more about Roberts.

* Doyle Brunson (1976, 1977) – present

Where to begin? There are so many great Doyle Brunson stories, but also so many that are well known because he is the world’s best known and most legendary poker player. Here is my most recent:

At Annie Duke’s “Sucking Out on the Rivers” charity poker tournament last week, I was seated with Doyle daughter Pamela. We’ve met and played poker together on several previous occasions. She used a small statue of a cat as a card protector. When she needed some extra luck, she switched to a small black rectangle named “Casper”. It has the ghost logo and the name “Texas Dolly” on one side.

Doyle considered it his lucky card protector and, sometime during the mid-Nineties, sold it to Howard Lederer for $7,500, provided that Howard not get possession until after Doyle’s death. Doyle gradually used it less and his daughter Pamela, as she got caught up in the poker wave and started playing, became very fond of it.

I knew from Howard and others that Doyle got Lederer to release his claim to the piece. Pamela revealed to me that she made her dad get permanent possession back and it cost him $15,000.

By the way, here is something typical of Doyle’s savvy and timing: His second championship in 1977 was the last time the Main Event was winner-take-all. He won $340,000 against 33 competitors. The next year, Bobby Baldwin prevailed over a field of 42 but took home just $210,000.

* Bobby Baldwin (1978) – not present

Eric Drache told me when Bobby was rising in the ranks of Steve Wynn’s Golden Nugget and Eric was running the poker room, Steve Wynn wanted to play them for high stakes. (In one of the old World Series videos, maybe 1973, there is a shot of Wynn playing, holding a giant cigar and wearing what looks like a Civil War uniform.)

Eric said, “He wasn’t very good, we didn’t have any money, and he was our boss. It was an uncomfortable situation. Finally, I told him he should give up playing us, ‘If we win, you pay us. But if you win, you’re just winning your own money because we haven’t got it.’”

* Hal Fowler (1979) – deceased

Little was known about his life after his unprecedented amateur victory over Bobby Hoff in 1979, until Des Wilson got on the trail and told the story in GHOSTS AT THE TABLE. Not to discredit the dead, but Fowler ran ridiculously well at the final table. In the final hand, he beat Hoff’s pocket aces. (In fact, twice in World Series history the final hand of the Main Event involved pocket aces. Both times, it was the losing hand. Dewey Tomko lost with aces against Carlos Mortensen in 2001.)

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