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#767 – 2009 WSOP #25 – Ghost Series #3 – 39 Champions, Part III

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I got too busy on other Series matters to finish my anecdotes about the champions of the previous 39 Main Events. In Part II, I had managed to make it through 1990, Mansour Matloubi. If you recall, I said all I could remember about his final table was about how pissed off Hans “Tuna” Lund was about finishing second, getting in his chips good twice for the championship, only to get outdrawn twice.

1991 – Brad Daugherty – present

The night I posted Part II, I played a $525 single-table satellite and was surprised to see Brad Dougherty sitting to my left. Surprised because (a) he had played the Champions Invitational earlier that day, (b) he was next subject for my 39 Champions posts, (c) he is friends with Tuna Lund, who I mentioned in the previous post, and (d) he’s the subject of one of favorite poker stories, which I told in my first column for CARD PLAYER in 2005 and in this blog as recently as 2 weeks ago.

I got to tell it again and Brad, who didn’t know me at the time of the original story, didn’t remember it, and missed part of it as it happened, loved it. When I told him how nice he was to the clueless married couple on the rail asking questions about this $200 mega we were playing, he said, “Nice? Doesn’t sound like me?”

“But you had an angle,” I told him. “I mentioned your book on satellite strategy and they bought a copy out in the hall, which they had you sign.”

“Did I win the satellite?” he asked.

“No. In fact when you busted, the husband looked at the book, and said, ‘Why does this THING cost $25? It’s paperback and barely 200 pages.’ Then his wife said as you walked away, ‘You’re the one who let him sign it. Now we can’t even take it back.’” The whole table roared at that.

I mentioned to Brad that I had just finished writing about Matloubi and Lund and Tuna being pissed at the unfortunate result. “I was pissed too, I owned a piece of Tuna, and that cost me $100,000.”

He also told me that Lund, who has played in the Series the last few years, is not in good health. He’s got Lymphoma and is looking down the barrel of some pretty heavy chemotherapy and stem-cell treatments. Brad mentioned that Hans is a pretty private person but likes hearing from his old friends, so I have been rounding up players to sign a get-well card. It’s been interesting going around to players like Chau Giang, Howard Lederer, David Grey, and John Cernuto and hearing about the genuine respect they have for a player who, because his achievements predated Chris Moneymaker, is mostly unheard of today.

1992 – Hamid Dastmalchi – absent

I’ve never met Hamid, but I feel like I know him. He’s a spectre who haunts the margins of my adventures with high-stakes poker players.

First, Hamid played Andy Beal at the Bellagio in May 2004 at the $100,000-$200,000 hold ‘em game, after Chip Reece lost $9 million. Dastmalchi drank heavily during the game, something Andy swears to me it must have been a put on, though Ted Forrest and Jennifer Harman swear to me that Hamid was just being Hamid.

Second, Hamid had to sue the Binion’s to honor $700,000 in $5,000-chips he had in his safe deposit box at the Horseshoe. He won.

Third, part and parcel with his dissatisfaction with the Binion family during the Nineties, he sold Ted Forrest his World Championship bracelet for $1,500 during their hundred-hour marathon “death match” at the Mirage. I wrote about the match in SUICIDE KING. Having subsisted on no sleep and 50 packs of cigarettes over 4 days, Hamid had to be removed from the Mirage on a stretcher. But Ted only later told me the story about the bracelet, and how, after Hamid was checked out by a doctor, he returned to the Mirage and got into another game.

Finally, when I was with Ted and Huck Seed one night talking about Razz, Huck said, “Remember the period when Hamid completely lost his mind and would play any hand with a six in it, so if the board came 2-3-4-5, he could make a higher straight than an opponent holding an Ace?”

1993 – Jim Bechtel – present

The big controversy at Bechtel’s final table was about some supposed goof by John Benneti that seems ridiculous when I look back at it today. They were three-handed, with Bechtel holding the chip lead, Bennetti having a decent stack, and Glen Cozen so short on chips that he would have to move all-in almost immediately. Bennetti was criticized for calling a Bechtel raise with A-K, check-raising Bechtel after a K-6-4 flop, and moving all in after the Jack of spades (the third spade) came on the turn. Bechtel, with pocket sixes, called and busted him, then just took three hands to eliminate Cozen.

How could you criticize Bennetti there? The funny thing is that all the criticism at the time was not that he should have gotten away top-pair/top-kicker with a three-flush on the board. It was that he was even in the hand in the first place, and should have waited for Cozen to bust before forcing the issue. (I suppose you could argue Bechtel was wrong to call Bonetti’s all-in bet under the same circumstances.)

1994 – Russ Hamilton – absent

I understand health problems kept Russ away: there are some players that want to kill him if he ever shows his face in their presence again.

1995 – Dan Harrington – present

Great poker author, great player, great guy. Dan once said on television that if he was stranded on a deserted island and could only take one book, he would take THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER, AND THE SUICIDE KING.

1996 – Huckleberry Seed – present

A Huck Seed story? Where do I start? How could I stop? I think Seed is going to win a bracelet this year, so I’ll keep the good ones in reserve. But did you know that Huck was the last of the 295 to enter the Main Event that year, and that 1996 was the last year for which there is no video recording of the final table of the World Series?

1998 – Scotty Nguyen – present

Scotty had a backer who, after Scotty bombed out of a couple $1,000 satellites, bailed. Mike Matasow and another player each put up $500 for Scotty to play another satellite, in exchange for 25% each. Scotty won the satellite and then the Main Event. Matusow won $250,000 on his $500 investment, as did the other player, whose name no one can seem to remember.

I don’t know much about Noel Furlong, the 1999 Champion, and nothing really about Carlos Mortensen, the 2001 Champion, other than what’s publicly known. I can tell you plenty about Chris Ferguson and some surprising things about Robert Varkonyi. From Moneymaker on, the champs are so well known in poker that there’s not a lot of space for having private anecdotes (though Greg Raymer’s story about being abducted at gunpoint at the Bellagio has never, to my satisfaction, really been told and he told it to me). If I get the time and the stories, I’ll wrap up with Part IV of this series, or just leave you hanging until I find a better occasion to tell you about Chris Ferguson’s car, Robert & Olga Varkonyi’s love story, and Greg Raymer’s fight with a gunman.

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