Learn from the Champions?
W.S.O.P. winners on the Main Event and poker in general
The World Series of Poker Main Event is just that the Main Event in the World of poker - fittingly held in Las Vegas every year.
So it is interesting to find out what poker players and fans have had to say - good and bad - about this great poker tournament.
The second part of this page lists the WSOP champions along with any known quotes from them about their victory or experiences in the Main Event.
Part One: W.S.O.P. Main Event - No Limit Texas Hold 'em
On the 1973 WSOP - "We had 13 players this year. I look to have better than 20 next year. It’s even liable to get up to be 50.”Benny Binion - little realising that the poker boom would explode his little tournament into the many thousands of players within 30 years
"The biggest sports tournament in the world? Well put it this way: this is the only sports event where you can win a sizeable sum without standing up from your chair."
Will Buckley in The Observer (2000)
"The WSOP is a confusing tournament. It comprises more than 20 smaller tournaments of various games during a three-week period, each one rewarding the victor with prize money and a WSOP bracelet. But when people say ‘world champion,’ they are referring to the WSOP’s final event, the $10,000 No-Limit Hold ‘em WSOP … Winning that final event is like a golfer winning The Masters instead of The Byron Nelson at Las Colinas. It’s a major, the big one."
Eric Celeste in The Dallas Observer (2001)
"Imagine if every duffer who ever shot par could buy his way into the Master’s. If the MVP’s of Pop Warner football were in the Super Bowl huddle with Heisman Trophy winners. Only in poker, where, as in life, success equals skill plus luck."
Jodi Wilgoren in The New York Times (2003)
"Four days of intense boredom interrupted by brief moments of sheer terror."
Anon in James McManus’ Positively Fifth Street (2003)
"As millions more virtual hands are dealt … poker seems poised to become the world’s game. The World Series has already crowned champions from China, Iran, Vietnam, Ireland, Spain and Australia. While the Justice Department figures out how to proceed, our national pastime, born during Jefferson’s presidency, remains a sturdy crucible in which players from all over the planet find themselves welcome contenders."
James McManus in The New York Times (2005)
"The World Series of Poker … a sport without athletics, a marathon that doesn’t move."
Steve Wilstein in The Seattle Times (2005)
"If the trials that come with sitting in one place for long periods of time qualified as a sporting challenge, this would be an Olympic event. That is the great grey area of big-time poker … To this event, like the collection at the scene of a house fire, a distinct blend of humanity is drawn."
Steve Hummer in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2006)
"It is a poker player’s dream to play the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. The WSOP is our Olympics, our Super Bowl, our Wimbledon - it is our summit."
Susie Isaacs in American Poker Player Magazine (2006)
"Everybody knows the Americans are the best in the world. The statistics are there for all to see. After all, they’ve won four out of the last seven world championships, while providing on 92.4% of the entrants … an incredible record."
Padraig Parkinson in Card Player Europe magazine (2006)
"The WSOP ... the Cheltenham Gold Cup for card-players."
Derek McGovern in The Daily Mirror (2006)
"I can’t dunk a basketball; I’m just not big enough. I can’t beat Tiger Woods in golf. But in poker, in the WSOP, you can beat the best players in the world."
Lyle Berman in USA Today (2006)
"There’s nothing like this tournament. It’s our Super Bowl, World Series, Kentucky Derby all rolled into one."
Cyndy Violette (2006)
"Poker is a game of skill, but only in the long run - great players endure losing streaks that last for months, and a complete idiot with ten grand to spare can win the world championship. (Some would argue that that’s already happened.)"
Mike D’Angelo in Esquire magazine (2007)
"People always ask me whether I would rather be a world champion or win an Oscar. I tell them that I would rather have that bracelet. I would carry that trophy around with me all day. I think it is harder to win a Main Event bracelet than it is to win an Oscar. I would definitely rather be the Main Event winner."
Mekhi Phifer in Bluff magazine (2008)
"Anyone who sits down in the Main Event is connected, part of a continuum. It’s electrifying to be connected to that history, regardless of whether you win or not."
Phil Gordon on ESPN.com (2009)
"I defy anyone to tell me that a tournament like the WSOP does not require as much or more physical and mental endurance than athletics, to sit there hour after hour after hour, playing and competing under the greatest pressure. You try to constantly make decisions for [hundreds of thousands of dollars] for that length of time and tell me that’s not pressure in a supreme test of stamina. Keep in mind that poker players post 100 percent of their own money. When they lose, they aren’t guaranteed a salary. Miss a free throw, throw an incomplete pass, professional athletes still receive a paycheck. If you don’t cut it in poker, you don’t eat. You tell me which players have more pressure and which is the real sport."
Nolan Dalla on ESPN.com (2009)
"Walking into the main tournament area at the World Series of Poker is an unnerving thing. The fierce concentration, the adrenaline, the sweat and hope and desperation are so thick in the air, you can practically see the fug they create. Competition is brutal, and nerves are on edge. It’s not a place for sissies."
Lena Katz in All In magazine
"I compare no-limit hold’em, especially the Main Event, to a ballet. You’re on your bloody toes all the time … dipping to great lows, but also reaching great highs."
Jenny Kaye
"I don’t scare easily, but when I play the Main Event, it’s fear - like someone is holding a gun to my head."
Mike Laing
"No-limit, particularly the Main Event, is like trying to do a soft shoe through a minefield. You can be blown to bits at any time."
George Marlowe
"As the old saying goes, poker takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master. Chris Moneymaker showed people that an Average Joe could win millions. It only takes a small taste of success for a player to start having World Series dreams. I'll never be able to drive a Randy Johnson fastball or dunk a basketball or catch a pass in the Super Bowl, but if I can scrape together $10,000, I can compete against the biggest names in the world for a life-changing payday. As for enduring appeal, it's been said that poker is not a card game played with people, but a people game played with cards, which is what makes it endlessly fascinating."
Brant Janeway
Part Two: W.S.O.P. Main Event Champions
with first-hand quotations (where known) relating to the Main Event ...
1970 Johnny Moss
1971 Johnny Moss
1972 Amarillo Slim Preston
"I won the Event and, neighbor, at one point I had a better chance of getting a French date with the Statue of Liberty than I did of winning that tournament."
"If a woman ever wins the world title, I'll eat my boot."
1973 Walter 'Puggy' Pearson
1974 Johnny Moss
1975 Brian 'Sailor' Roberts
1976 Doyle Brunson
"It's definitely more important than any other tournament ... and so it's special"
1977 Doyle Brunson
1978 Bobby Baldwin
1979 Hal Fowler
1980 Stu Ungar
"By ‘80, there were over three hundred players, twenty events, and three million in prize money. Not that it mattered. You could make more money in side games. It was the fuckin’ World Series of Poker, and either you had the chops to win a bracelet, or you didn’t."
Stuey Ungar [played by Michael Imperioli] in High Roller (2003)
1981 Stu Ungar
1982 Jack Straus
"All you need to win is a chip and a chair."
1983 Tom McEvoy
1984 Jack Keller
1985 Bill Smith
1986 Berry Johnston
1987 Johnny Chan
1988 Johnny Chan
1989 Phil Hellmuth
"Everybody knows the World Series of Poker is the biggest stage in the world ... This is where you make your name."
1990 Mansour Matloubi
1991 Brad Daugherty
1992 Hamid Dastmalchi
1993 Jim Bechtel
1994 Russ Hamilton
1995 Dan Harrington
1996 Huck Seed
1997 Stu Ungar
1998 Scotty Nguyen
"Playing the Big One, Baby, is like playing the Masters, I imagine. Hard to describe - it’s definitely a real natural high, Baby"
1999 Noel Furlong
"I worked hard, but it was 99 percent luck."
2000 Chris Ferguson
"It’s the most painful tournament to get knocked out of because it’s so much fun and you have to wait a year to start again."
2001 Juan Carlos Mortensen
2002 Robert Varkonyi
"I was totally focused, played nearly perfect poker, and caught a few lucky breaks. I played very gutsy and with no fear. But today it's different; when I won it we were only 631 entrants. Now you need even more luck and also more endurance."
2003 Chris Moneymaker
"I was a little underestimated because no one knew who I was, if I can win it, anybody can."
"What a kick in the teeth that must have been for the Amarillo Slim’s, the Doyle Brunsons and the Puggy Pearsons who earned their World Series passport the hard way ... in smoke-filled card-rooms the world over. An internet dude winning the World Series ... that’s like a gelding winning the Derby, a mongrel winning Cruft’s, a transsexual winning Miss World, Carole Thatcher winning I’m A Celebrity."
Derek McGovern in The Daily Mirror (2006)
2004 Greg Raymer
"You have to play really good and you have to run really good."
2005 Joe Hachem
"Nothing in sport is more transformational. It’s like American Idol #133."
2006 Jamie Gold
Referring to Johnny Chan - "He believed in me, He told me I could win this."
2007 Jerry Yang
2008 Peter Eastgate
"I do not think I have realized yet what a big moment this is. It will come the next days and weeks. I expect I will get emotional about it later. But not as much now ... I was not focusing on the records I could break. I just concentrated on the game."
2009 Joe Cada
"It still has not hit me yet. I don't know what to think ... I have really put a lot into this. I have been playing poker for some time, and to come here and win it in my very first year - I feel very fortunate."
We shall be adding more and more WSOP quotes to this page, so if you know of any quotations by WSOP Main Event champions relating to the Main Event, or have any fresh quotes on the WSOP itself, please let us know via the comments form below.
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