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Odds are Against a Pro WSOP Champion

Russ Scott

Will a Pro Win the WSOP Main Event? Numbers Say No

No poker professional has won the World Series main event since 2001, when Carlos Mortensen, holding a suited K-Q, cracked fellow pro Dewey Tomko's pocket aces to take the championship.

When the main event of the 39th annual WSOP fires up this week in Las Vegas, two prevailing patterns will clash head-on: A string of six straight titles won by amateurs versus this year's extraordinary number of pros who have won bracelets leading up to the final event.

So far this summer, about two-thirds of the 53 WSOP preliminary tournaments have been won by players who listed "poker pro" as their occupation. Some aren't widely known, but many are, such as John Phan, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Kenny Tran, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren, David Benyamine and Layne Flack.

The success rate has led some to label this Series as the "Year of the Pro," but does that mean a big-name pro will win the 2008 no-limit hold 'em main event?

The numbers say no.

For the first 30 years of the Series (1970-1999), small main-event fields were the near-exclusive playground of professionals willing to pay $10,000 to compete. Only three amateurs broke through to victory during that stretch: Hal Fowler in 1979, Jim Bechtel in 1993 and Noel Furlong in 1999, against a then-record field of 393.

Furlong's title helped spike the field to 512 in 2000. Two years later, investment-banker-turned-poker-player Robert Varkonyi topped a field of 631. In 2003, amateur Chris Moneymaker's improbable victory against 839 players helped spark a poker boom that saw main-event fields peak at 8,773 in 2006.

The big numbers mean small chances for any given pro. Two days before trying to defend his 2004 main-event title, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer said even the best player in such huge fields is a 2,000-to-1 long-shot. "Maybe 1,500-to-1, if you want to be really generous," he said.

Ten-time bracelet winner Doyle Brunson agrees. Brunson, who took the main event in 1976 and 1977 with fields of just 22 and 34 players, said in his blog last week that the tournament is so large now "it's unlikely any of the pros will ever have a chance to win it."

Tuan Lam, the last pro in 2007 with a chance to break the amateurs' victory streak, said even the professionals must play almost perfect poker to become world champion.

"If you're a pro, you have to play good on every single hand. In every situation, you have to make the right decision," said Lam, a Vietnam refugee who earned Canadian citizenship a few years ago. "But if you always think, 'I'm a pro,' and you don't give opponents credit and you play reckless, just one wrong move and your whole tournament is ruined," he said.

"Even though they're pros, they can't always keep control of their emotions," said Lam, who kept a low profile at last year's final table before going heads-up against eventual champ Jerry Yang, a recreational player from California. "When I first sat down at the final table, my strategy was to play tight under the gun (early position) and make sure I'm safe," Lam said. "I didn't take any risks at the beginning. I waited until the table got shorter so I can attack and play more aggressive. I couldn't do anything at the full table because everybody had chips. And, I didn't have any good hands at the beginning."

Lam's conservative plan worked -- for a while. "When the table got shorter, my chips went very badly, too," he said. When just the two of them were left, Lam disappointed himself.

"I didn't take much risk with Jerry heads-up," he said. "I think that's the wrong strategy to play with Jerry. Instead, I should have gone all-in a couple of times before my chips went down. I knew a couple times I had him beat, but I tried to set him up and the flop came out wrong. He bet big, and I had to lay down the hands. I wish I'd played more aggressive, going all-in instead of just calling. That's not my game."

In acknowledging his mistake, Lam actually was backing up his belief that making "right decisions" is crucial for a pro to win the main event.

So, can Lam or any other pro play almost perfectly and win the 2008 title? Sure, it could happen, but I wouldn't bet on it -- not even in the "Year of the Pro."

Check out WSOP main event happenings from Las Vegas at www.luckydogpoker.com, starting Sunday.

E-mail your poker questions and comments to russ@luckydogpoker.com for use in future columns. To find out more about Russ Scott and read previous LuckyDog Poker columns, visit www.creators.com or www.luckydogpoker.com.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.

This news arrived on: 07/01/2008

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