World Series of Poker

The World Series of Poker is going on right now at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas. Most people are familiar with it from the replays on ESPN, watching Chris Moneymaker win last year. But if you're not a poker player, you probably don't realize that the event that is televised is only the last of 33 separate tournaments played over about 5 weeks. The events run the gamut of different games played, buy-in amounts, and limits, leading up to the Big One, the championship event, which is a $10,000 entry No Limit Holdem tournament. This year they are expecting something on the order of 1400-1600 players in this event, which means a prize pool well into 8 figures and a likely first place prize of at least $3 million, the richest poker tournament in history.

Part of the reason for this huge increase in popularity is the World Poker Tour on television, which has garnered huge ratings. But probably the biggest factor is the growth of online poker and the satellite tournaments they've run to put players into the WSOP final event, and the fact that last year's winner got into the tournament that way, spending $40 to win a seat, then turning it into $2.5 million by winning the whole thing. That has drawn people far and wide who think, "Hey, if he can do it, so can I". And they may well be right. I have not played in the WSOP yet, but I have a bit of history with it over the last few years.

The history of Binion's Horseshoe is an interesting one. It was started decades ago by Benny Binion, an old time gambler and Texas gangster. He turned it into one of the classic Vegas casinos, one of the original downtown gambling saloons, famous for their poker games and for taking any bet regardless of how high the amount. The WSOP began, unofficially, in 1949, when Nick (the Greek) Dandolos challenged Johnny Moss to a heads up poker match for $1 million each, winner take all. Benny Binion provided a venue for it at the Horseshoe, setting up a big tent outside for them to play in public view. The two men played for 5 straight months, stopping only to sleep and eat, until Johnny Moss finally had all the money. In 1970, Benny Binion decided to recreate the event and invited some of the best poker players in the world to take part. Johnny Moss won again, but at the time the title of World Champion was decided by a vote, not by actually winning the tournament. In 1971, it was changed to a "freezeout" format, meaning it was decided with a real elimination tournament, but Moss won yet again. It was thereafter an annual event, and it grew in popularity year by year.

Benny died in 1989 and his son Jack took over the casino. Jack was very popular with the players and employees and the WSOP continued to grow under his watch. Then a battle began for control over the operation between Jack and his sister Becky, which Becky ultimately won a few years ago. Over the last few years, as the WSOP continued to grow exponentially because of the TV exposure and all of the satellite events feeding people into the tournament, Becky proceeded to run the Horseshoe into the ground. Becky Binion Behnen is married Nick Behnen, your garden variety scumbag who is barred from operating a casino, or even working for one, in the state of Nevada. Nonetheless, he played a huge role in destroying what the Horseshoe once was. Reports of his abuse of employees and players were common, including tearing a picture of former WSOP champion Russ Hamilton off the wall with a crowbar in a fit of rage a couple years ago.

In 2001, the shit hit the fan, so to speak. The WSOP announced that they were going to withhold 3% from the prize pool to use as a "toke pool" - a fund that would be divided among the dealers and tournament staff as tips. This was a good idea, but some background is probably required for non-poker players to understand why. Big tournaments like this require a lot of people to run, obviously, and no casino has enough dealers or floor people on hand to handle such an event. So there is a pool of poker dealers and tournament staff that basically floats around the country running big poker tournaments. They have to pay their own way, though, so they have to be assured of making a certain amount of money to make it worthwhile and profitable for them. It's in everyone's best interests to have high quality dealers and staff to run things, so having a pool that would guarantee them a minimum income helps the players as well as the dealers and staff. Relying on the players who finish in the money to leave tips, which most did, was too inconsistent, and those tips are not tax deductible, so it really hurt the winners to do it.

All in all, a toke pool was a great idea for all involved and most of the major tournaments use one now for all these reasons. The problem here was that rumors were flying that Becky was planning to use some of the money to reimburse her everyday hotel staff rather than distribute it all to the dealers and staff, and they were refusing to spell out how much would go to whom (the traditional breakdown was something like 2% to the dealers, 1% to the floor staff and tournament personnel). Word got around and a lot of players were talking about it. Jeff Simpson, a casino beat writer for the Las Vegas Review Journal, did a story on it and cornered a few players at the Horseshoe to get their thoughts on it. Among those quoted was Paul Phillips, a professional poker player from Las Vegas, who told Simpson that the players had been misled on the issue and felt antagonized, which was entirely true. Paul was also at the time a regular participant in the rec.gambling.poker (RGP) usenet newsgroup, which I have long participated in as well.

The day after Simpson's article was published, Paul Phillips was pulled from a game at the Horseshoe by some of Becky's goons security personnel, taken to a back room, photographed and barred from the casino for daring to say what everyone knew was true. Amusingly, her head of security told the newspaper that they barred him because they wanted to "avoid controversy" at the WSOP. And this all happened on the day the tournament started! Brilliant folks, eh? Needless to say, rather than avoiding controversy, it caused more. And adding to this, it was announced that Becky would consider letting him come back if he apologized to her for what he said in the paper. All of this caused quite a furor in the poker world, particularly in the RGP newsgroup. I was one of many, many people who came to Paul's defense and strongly criticized Binion's for their actions.

Ironically, Paul was proven 100% correct by what happened in the following few weeks. Linda Johnson, the founder of Card Player magazine, met with Becky and tried to get Paul unbarred (which was successful, but when he went back they intimidated him some more and he decided it was safer to stay away) and to settle once and for all the question of where the money would be going. Becky allowed Linda to release a statement in RGP that she had approved word for word, which said that every penny of the toke pool would go to the dealers and tournament personnel. She lied. Over the course of that years World Series, Becky shorted the dealers and tournament personnel to the tune of nearly $200,000, which resulted in some of them walking out on her when the tournament ended. She fired the tournament directors and her poker room manager, who was the daughter of the tournament director, as well as a couple of others and it blew up into an even bigger controversy.

In the process of all of this, I received a nasty and incoherent e-mail from Benny Binion Behnen, Becky's son, who was the head of the poker operation at the Horseshoe. He actually challenged me to a poker match, as though that would somehow absolve them of their lies. I'm not sure what his reasoning was, but he was quite irrational. And of course, I was barred from playing at the Horseshoe as well, which was hardly a big deal. I didn't play there anyway. It had long since become a broken down wreck of a casino, filled with the stench of a billion cigarettes and who knows what else. The only reason to go there would be to play in the WSOP, which I wasn't planning to do anyway as long as these scumbags ran the place. 2002 met with more controversy yet, with Becky firing some of the dealers for staging a walkout when they were lied to yet again, and getting sued. She finally ran the place into the ground completely in 2003 and a few months ago, the IRS seized the property for back taxes. Harrah's ended up buying the name and reopening to stage this year's tournament, which has attracted record numbers so far.

Paul Phillips, by the way, has done brilliantly. In the first week of tournaments, he made it to two final tables, finishing 2nd and 4th. He is also one of the leading winners on the World Poker Tour so far, having won $1.1 million with a first place finish at the Bellagio Five Diamond classic in December and another $400,000 or so with a second place finish at the WPT event at the Bicycle casino in L.A. last year. I'm very happy that someone finally ran Becky and her thug family out of the business so that Paul could go back to the World Series, where he is surely among the favorites to win in this year's championship event. Someday soon, I hope to join him at a final table there.