The Beauty and the Beast

At the championship table of the 1995 World Series of Poker, Dan Harrington led Howard Goldfarb $1,697,000 to $1,033,000 in chips when they began playing heads up for the title. With an ante of $3,000 and the blinds at $15,000-$30,000, the final hand came down when Goldfarb raised $100,000 before the flop with the A 7 and Harrington called with the 9 8. On the 8 6 2 flop, Harrington checked and Goldfarb went all in with his overcard ace. Barely hesitating, Harrington called with top pair. The two queens that fell on fourth and fifth streets helped neither player, and Harrington became the 1995 world champion of poker with queens and eights.

Earlier during the Series, Harrington had won the $2,500 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament after winning a one-table satellite. He then won his seat in the championship event via a supersatellite. Better known as a chess player, Harrington entered only two tournaments and won both of them, to make his WSOP batting average perfect.

But the big news of the Series wasn't that a Californian had beaten a Canadian for the title – Harrington's victory was somewhat overshadowed by the first and only appearance to date of a woman at the final table of the "big one." Barbara Enright, the 1986 ladies world champion, finished fifth to Harrington, Goldfarb, Brent Carter, and Hamid Dastmalchi (the 1992 world champion) in the championship event.

Enright might have finished higher had she not suffered a truly bad beat. When the action was fivehanded, it seemed apparent that players were making calls based on the chip counts of their opponents rather than on the strength of their holecards. For example, Dastmalchi, who was short-stacked against the blinds, picked up J-10 suited on the button and moved in his last $92,000 in chips. After the small blind folded, Harrington made a very marginal call from the big blind with J-3 offsuit. He was second in chip count at that time, almost tied with Goldfarb. Nothing came to help either hand, and Dastmalchi's J-10 won the pot.

In the next scenario, Enright was in the big blind with 8-8. Holding the 6 3 in the small blind, Carter completed the blind bet (called). By far the shortest stack, Enright had just enough chips to make a decent raise. Carter called the raise. He had lots of chips and decided to gamble in a spot in which lots of other players would have passed. The board came with the Q 6 3 9 A. Carter's two pair sent Enright, visibly disappointed, to the rail. Whereas Dastmalchi's low chip count had contributed to his doubling up against Harrington, Enright's low chip count led to her defeat.

In a 1997 interview with Enright, Dana Smith asked the female poker whiz if she thought Carter's play was correct. Understandably, she answered, "I don't think so. If he was willing to match my chips, he should have moved in with his hand in the first place to try to get me off the hand, to rob me – that would have been a good play. But he just limped, not knowing that I would raise. With a 6-3, what could he expect to beat? I could have been sitting there with a 9-2 and beaten him on the flop by catching a pair of nines. Brent told me later that he thought I was bluffing him when I moved in all of my chips."

"Do you think that, because of your aggressive reputation in poker, players sometimes call you with lesser hands because they think you're bluffing?" Smith asked.

"Yes, and I like that because when I get hands, I'm always going to get paid off," Enright answered. "Of course, sometimes it's a disadvantage because they will chase me down. And that's what happened in 1995."

But there's a silver lining to every poker cloud, it seems. Enright won her seat in the big one via a supersatellite. Just before entering it, she had asked a player if he wanted to stake her for the $220 buy-in. He declined. "That cost him $57,000," Enright remarked.

The details of the last hand at the 1995 championship table and parts of the Enright interview are from The Championship Table, the new book that Dana Smith, Ralph Wheeler, and I have just completed. The account of the two key hands played during the 1995 championship appear in Championship Tournament Practice Hands, a new book by T.J. Cloutier and me. I believe these two books work together nicely to give you a well-rounded account of the notables and the action at the WSOP. Provided we are successful with our key hands, I'm sure we'll meet one day soon at the championship table.

Editor's note: Tom McEvoy is the author of the best-selling Tournament Poker and the co-author with T.J. Cloutier of the Championship series of poker books, all of which are available through Card Player. Visit www.pokerbooks.com for more information.