Jim McManus’s 2003 book Positively Fifth Street, his story of making the final table of the 2000 WSOP Main Event, is one of the forgotten drivers of the poker boom. As we were watching an unknown accountant win the WSOP from a satellite victory, a New York Times bestseller told the story of an unknown writer who almost did the same thing three years earlier. It remains, to this day, a compelling tale of not only poker personalities & high-stakes drama, but also the intertwined trial after the murder of Ted Binion, the outcast heroin addict of the Horseshoe heirs.Having read Positively Fifth Street for the first time in five years last week, I was struck by how long ago the beginning of this decade seems, in poker terms. 531 players entered the 2000 WSOP – a record by over 25%. Everyone either paid $10,000 cash, or got in via a live satellite in the poker room at the Horseshoe. 23 prelim events came in the four weeks before the Main Event.
Apart from the sheer size of the World Series of Poker, three things stood out to me as I retraced McManus’s journey from Chicago freelancer to Horseshoe denizen to Olympic Gardens VIP’er and back:
The Main Event Structure is Much Improved
Let’s take a side-by-side look at final 14 players from 2000, as compared to last year. We’ll focus on the stack sizes, as expressed by Harrington’s “M” – the stack sizes divided by Cost per Round.
The 2000 WSOP stacks look like a typical online MTT, with an average stack of around 35 big blinds when the serious money is approaching. Most players were in a position where one serious pot, to showdown, meant their tournament life. Last year, however, there was a considerable amount of play for all but the Andersen bringing up the rear. The WSOP tournament directors deserve a tremendous amount of credit for improving the structures to allow the cream to rise to the top.
The Big Names
In 2000, 9 of the final 14 players were well known to the poker community (a group much smaller than today, granted). Most of those names are still recognizable to the post-Moneymaker (or post-Gold, even) crowd. It remains to be seen how many of the 2008 list will be making waves and capturing solid results in five years…but the initial results were not promising. One November Nine preview show after another was full of “I really don’t know anyone but Chino” comments.
When ESPN put together the idea of delaying the Final Table for 117 days in order to market and build excitement…the 2000 group was what they had in mind. The back stories and media accessibility with people like Shulman, Sexton and Duke would be overwhelming. It’s too bad for them this kind of lineup may never be seen again.
We’ve Gotten Better at Tournament Poker
To be fair, most of the hands McManus describes are ones he was in…and he was admittedly new to tournament poker. And played like it. But when you read the book, it is drastic and obvious how much the game has changed, from both the theoretic and practiced standpoint.
Throughout the 2000 World Series of Poker, the standard pre-flop raise size was about 3.5x to 4x the BB, even when the antes kicked in and the stacks got smaller. The lack of aggression was staggering…pre-flop 3-bets and simple raises on later streets were non-existent. How many differences can we find in this 2000 WSOP hand (near the end of Day 1), compared to how a similar hand might play out today:
Blinds are 200/400 with a 50 ante. The Hijack raises to 1200 with J
J
, and the button & both blinds call. There is now 5250 in the pot. The flop is K
Jx 8x (rainbow flop). The blinds both check, Hijack bets 1500, Button raises to 3000, SB and Hijack call. There is now 14250 in the pot. The turn is the 8. The SB checks, and the Hijack shoves his last 9600. Button flashes his QQ to the Hijack as he folds them. SB calls, drawing dead with 10 9.Today’s player typically makes mistakes with over-aggression. Ten years ago, it was call-and-pray. Part of the reason I keep playing is to see where the next evolution occurs…and to celebrate the game’s past, where the Horseshoe was the center of the poker universe, nobody’s first live game was the Main Event, and TV coverage consisted of one hour on Discovery Channel.
The most exciting part of the WSOP is just as true now as it was then: anyone can win. Jim McManus’s book, no less enthralling and brilliant today as it was then, is proof.
* Paul grapsfan Herzog has been a PocketFives.com Contributing Writer since 2005, and is a successful mid-stakes poker player. He can often be found playing online when he has free time away from his duties as a Software Testing Engineer for a Minnesota firm.
---
Positively Fifth Street
---
More articles by grapsfan
Badugi! Badugi! Badugi!
Poker Science
Are You a Bankroll Nit?
A Simple Guide to Staking
Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Worst Play in No Limit Holdem
Making Tough Decisions Easier
Asking for Help in Online Poker Forums
Full Tilt Poker Matrix SNG Tournaments
I'm Okay. You're Okay.
Reading Rainbow
Winning at Micro Stakes Poker
Competing in Games, not Sports
Let the Kids Play?
Summer Sabbatical
Book Review: Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time
Book Review: Harrington on Cash Games
Selective Memory
Book Review: Poker Wisdom of a Champion
Is Variance Making You Sick?
Greed Gone Wild: WSOP Final Table Rescheduled
Randomness and Predictability
The Advantage Player
Resolving, Again
-----
Canada
United Kingdom
Costa Rica
Australia
Mexico
Denmark
Russian Federation
Sweden
Brazil
Germany
