The Scoop -- Tom McEvoy

Tom McEvoy is considered one of the most influential players in the game, having helped pave the way for tournament specialists. He's won more than $2.6 million in tournaments, including a World Series of Poker main-event win in 1983 and three other bracelets. McEvoy continues to make his living playing tournaments, and sits down with Adam and Diego for a trip down memory lane.


Diego Cordovez: One thing I don't think people realize now, with tournament poker being so big, is that you pioneered the idea of tournament poker being a livelihood in itself. Poker is a profession, but there are live games, and the tournaments were just an excuse to gather some big-money guys, but I think you were the first guy who decided to play tournaments all day long, even though they were live tournaments and involved a lot more running around, and make a living based just on tournaments. Is that accurate?

Tom McEvoy: That is actually very accurate. Before I even moved to Las Vegas, the very first time I played a tournament, I was playing some cash games at the Golden Nugget, and they had a tournament. They didn't even have tournament chips. You played with casino chips, and you kept what was in front of you when you got down to 10 percent of the players. I remember that there were 34 players, playing a $110 tournament. I finished second, so I got hooked for life. That was way back in 1978.

DC: That's either the best or worst thing that ever happened to you [laughing].

TM: Yeah, that can be debated either way. After that, I really got hooked on tournament poker. I developed my own skills and eventually wrote books, and so forth. Of course, now the game has evolved so much that it's a different era, but back then, I was definitely what you call a tournament specialist, one of the few who would concentrate on tournaments, and there were a lot fewer to choose from. I remember playing $30 and $40 tournaments with Johnny Chan in the early '80s before anyone had ever heard of him. That's how I cut my teeth, playing against those guys.

Adam Schoenfeld: When you started doing this, it's easy now to forget that people in the real world had never heard of poker tournaments. When you were doing this for a living, did you have to explain to people in your real life that you played for chips and a prize? It was unheard of.

TM: Well, it was like, "What do you really do?" [laughing] I'd say, "Well, it's what I do do!" The idea of being a professional poker player, especially a tournament poker player, was almost incomprehensible to people.

DC: One thing that I think is right also is that people didn't even understand how tournaments differ from live play, and obviously now there still is a big difference, but people appreciate it and maybe they are closing that gap, but when you started playing tournaments, there was no sophistication at all about the fact that they called for different strategies, or tactics, or understanding of the prize money, or whatever. Is it fair to say that you just kind of developed these on your own? Or, were there any sources of information from other players who were thinking along the same lines, or were people just sitting down and thinking, "All right, I'll just play poker and see what happens."

TM: After I won the World Series of Poker, I was asked to write a tournament book. Back then - this was 1985, don't forget - nothing had ever been written on tournament poker. I wrote the very first book.

DC: Literally nothing?

TM: Nothing. People just didn't quite understand tournaments. They played them like they were in cash games, and of course we know that there are huge differences in what you have to do. So, I wrote the very first book. Mike Caro kind of reviewed it, and he was a lot more mathematically oriented than me, but he said it was amazing to him that, without a good mathematical background comparable to his, I was as on target as I was. It was mostly just kind of my own strategies that I developed by playing; you know, the S.O.P. method - seat of your pants [laughing].