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WSOP: The Beginning

It's a championship like no other. You don't have to be on a winning team to participate, the prize is bigger than any one player will earn from any other sport and most important, it is a true World Series attracting people from all over the globe.

Seven players butted heads in the first event in 1970, but the genesis of the competiton was actually 20 years earlier. There was no poker room at the Horseshoe when Nick "the Greek" Dandolos, one of the world's most famous gamblers, approached owner Benny Binion with an intriguing proposition in 1949. He wanted to challenge the best poker player in the world in a high-stakes, heads-up match.

A quintessential promoter, saw great publicity in the event and pitted the Greek against the best poker player he knew: Fellow Texan Johnny Moss. Benny had one condition. The game had to be public. He set up a card table in front of the Horseshoe and the marathon began. It lasted for five months with breaks only for very occasional sleep. Each day a crowd ten-feet deep watched spellbound as the pair played every form of poker imaginable. When it was all over, Dandolos got up and bowed slightly, saying, "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go," and went upstairs to bed. It's rumored that Johnny made $2 million, but more important, the seed of the World Series had been planted.

In 1968, and '69, Binion and a fraternity of gamblers went to the Texas Gamblers Reunion at Tom Moore's Holiday Hotel in Reno. It was a poker who's who: Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim Preston, Aubrey Day, Jack Straus, "Corky" McCorquodale, Jimmy Casella, Bill Boyd and Syd Wyman, to name a few.

In May 1970, Binion's opened a poker room. The players gathered and did what they always did, play poker. The games were Texas hold'em and 2-7 lowball. Always thinking big, Benny dubbed it the World Series, but didn't get the publicity he had hoped for. When it was over, the group voted Johnny Moss world champion, and his prize was a silver cup. It was an L.A. Times reporter, Ted Thackrey, who pushed the envelope. Amarillo Slim recalls, "He said that to be interesting, it had to be competitive. There had to be a real winner. I said: 'Freezeout,' meaning everyone would put up a certain amount of money and one guy would get it all. That one word changed poker forever."

The World Series as we know it today began in 1971. Benny's son Jack Binion hosted the tournament with legendary gambler Titanic Thomson, who was brought in for publicity purposes. Seven players paid the $5,000 buy-in. Amarillo Slim was at that first table, along with Doyle Brunson, Sailor Roberts, Jimmy Casella, Aubrey Day, James Roy and the previous winner, Johnny Moss. They were all old friends. Slim recalls, "We didn't care who came in first, we didn't even care about the money. We only cared about the game."