2,000 S.H.O.E.: The S.H.O.E. is Only Fitting

Editor's note: This is one in a series of articles originally written for an Internet website for the 2001 World Series of Poker tournament events.

Rotation games are fairly common at high stakes. The big-money boys and girls like to play games like H.O.R.S.E (hold'em, Omaha, razz, stud, and eight-or-better stud) or H.O.S.E. (same game minus the razz) because they figure, correctly, that the weaker players won't play at least one of the games well.

Binion's Horseshoe added its own version of a rotation game to the schedule this year, S.H.O.E, selecting a mix of games that would produce an acronym appropriate to its venue: stud, hold'em, Omaha eight-or-better, and eight-or-better stud.

It's hard enough to be a great hold'em player, or a great Omaha player. When you can play all the games well, you're a superstar. That's one of the things I like about the Tournament of Champions: You have to play four different games to get the title.

The Shoe Fit

Whoever won the S.H.O.E. event here figured to be a poker superstar, and figured to earn even more respect than the typical bracelet winner does, because he or she would have to demonstrate a broad spectrum of abilities. We figured right. The S.H.O.E. fit.

David "The Dragon" Pham earned the 2000 Player of the Year status in Nolan Dalla's Card Player rankings by piling up more points in more American tournaments than anyone else. Lightning can strike anyone once or twice, but to cash so consistently and in so many different games, you have to be one superb poker player.

Pham put an exclamation point on his 2000 Player of the Year performance by winning the initial S.H.O.E. in style and earning a very high place on my list of people I'd rather not see at my table in any game, at any time (that's for his ability: on personality, he'd earn roughly the same place on my list of people I would like to play with).

A total of 181 brave souls started this tournament, and when we started play at the final table, the chip counts were:

Seat – Player – Chip Count

1 – Skip Wilson – $27,000

2 – Cyndy Violette – $42,200