Tom McEvoy Chronicles Unique Life In Poker – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

At a time when many still viewed poker players as lowlifes and losers, Tom McEvoy gave up his life in Michigan and career in accounting to strike it big in Las Vegas. And he succeeded.

McEvoy is old school. And over the last five decades, he has seen it all in poker. From smoke-filled casinos in the 1970s and ‘80s, to winning the big one at the World Series of Poker, to the birth of the online game, becoming an ambassador, and being inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

Writing about poker strategy? The former Card Player columnist was one of the first to gain a following, and penned over a dozen books that make the game more accessible and profitable for players. Perhaps his biggest contribution to the game was helping to lead the charge against smoking at the tables. It took years, but the WSOP finally became smoke-free in 2002 at his insistence.

In a career that has seen so many changes, it seems only natural his new autobiography is titled Poker Pioneer. The tell-all book doesn’t shy away from the bumpy ride that it has been at times, nor the negative aspects of the game that often get left out of other poker stories. He hoped to tell a true account of his life in the game.

“You’ll read through it, and you’ll know that I pissed off a few people,” McEvoy admitted. “But I didn’t put one word in that book that was bullshit. Not one word. That’s a lot different than how other authors, especially in the poker world, wrote their autobiographies. They left out a lot of stuff. I told (co-author) Brad Smith from the get-go that this book is going to be different. I just wanted to tell the story –warts and all, which means not just my successes, but all my failures.”

Pioneer Of The Game

Born in Grand Rapids Michigan, McEvoy took up poker full-time after getting laid off from his accounting job in 1978. His grandmother played a crucial role in his future career, teaching McEvoy and his brothers to play at an early age. That didn’t include always taking it easy on the youngsters.

“I knew a full house beat a flush before most kids knew their ABCs,” he notes in the book. “I was good at numbers, and the game helped me learn math at a young age. As early as when I was age five, Grandma would set me on her knee and give me a dollar’s worth of coins – dimes, nickels, and pennies – and then spend the next few hours winning it back from me.”

By 1983, McEvoy was in Las Vegas and struck gold with two bracelets at the WSOP. The first was a $1,000 limit hold’em event for $177,000, and later in the series he topped a field of 108 players in the $10,000 main event for $540,000. Winning the biggest event in poker came with another first – the first champion to win after securing an entry via satellite. In 1986, he won the $1,000 razz for $52,400, and then winning the $1,500 limit Omaha event in 1992 for $79,200 earned him his fourth bracelet.

McEvoy helped to shape the modern-day poker world. Poker was a much different game in the 1980s. There were fewer cardrooms, and tournaments often were played in a haze of smoke as gamblers puffed cigarettes and cigars. McEvoy not only thought getting rid of the smoke could provide some breathing room for players, but believed there was an opportunity to bring more players into the game if tournaments were smoke-free.

During this time McEvoy also began lobbying for flatter payouts. In his limit hold’em win at the WSOP, McEvoy was awarded an astounding 50% of the prize pool, but realized seeing more players win sizable amounts was good for the game’s ecosystem.

Another of his personal lobbying efforts was for reducing the number of hours played each day, eventually leading to the style of tournament seen in most series today. He always hoped for rules that would bring in more players.

“Some of these guys liked top heavy payouts,” he says. “They didn’t want to reveal hole cards. That was not to the benefit of poker and favored a handful of the superstars at the time. More people need to be paid and making these things marathon sessions made no sense.”

A penchant for math helped McEvoy understand the numbers behind the game. He became one of the first players to write books focusing on tournament strategy. When online poker took off in the late-1990s and early 2000s, McEvoy became one of the game’s first ambassadors, serving as a PokerStars team pro for eight years.

The idea of a book came about a decade ago at the urging of friends who had been treated to McEvoy’s stories over the years. The Poker Hall of Famer enlisted the help of Brad Smith, a poker player and publicity director of the Casino Collectibles Association.

“​​I really liked his writing,” McEvoy says. “We struck up an immediate friendship, and after I’d known him for maybe two years, we discussed the possibility of him having an interest in my autobiography. I could not do this on my own. I needed help. Also, he loves poker. It was kind of a labor of love for both of us.”

Putting It All Out There

When it comes to looking at the world of poker, McEvoy pulled no punches on some in the industry. That includes Russ Hamilton, the 1994 WSOP main event champion and an Ultimate Bet consultant alleged to have been behind the cheating scandal that helped take down the site. McEvoy said he knew Hamilton was cheating and proved that after being hired to provide an analysis of some of the hands in question.

“I know for a fact the cheating happened, because he paid me handsomely to do an audit that he hoped would document no dishonesty was occurring,” he writes in the book. “Much to his chagrin, my analysis documented outright fraud was taking place.”

Players were accusing the site of fraud, making note of playing against some who were making illogical plays and never seemed to lose. Hamilton contacted McEvoy about using his background in accounting and poker to audit and certify everything was on the up-and-up. After analyzing 10,000 hands without seeing player usernames, McEvoy tagged about 10% as questionable and 1% as “outright fraud.”

“He complimented me and told me the report was very well done, and that he was going to forward it to the gaming commission of Canada,” McEvoy writes. “Of course, he just stuck it in his safe and it never saw daylight. I found out later why. Russ was the chief culprit and chief suspect.”

In the book, McEvoy reserves a few words for another main event champion in Johnny Chan, a player he believed to be his friend. Chan had bought a piece of McEvoy’s action in the main event and scored $80,000 on a $1,000 investment. Afterward, a getaway vacation that included Chan came with strings attached, according to McEvoy.

“What I didn’t realize at the time was that Johnny Chan had an agenda, and that he has an agenda for everything,” McEvoy writes. “Back then, Johnny had few personal friends. He had associates and business acquaintances. He was all about Chan and all about making money. His agenda on our trip was to try and hustle me and beat me out of as much money as he could playing heads-up poker.”

He also had some harsh words for Amarillo Slim Preston.

“Amarillo Slim was a womanizer,” McEvoy writes. “He was also a bigot. This was after the Vietnam War, and a lot of Americans didn’t like Vietnamese people. At the time, there were a lot of Vietnamese playing poker, many of them risk-taking immigrants who had escaped communism. Slim would often make racially charged- remarks about other minorities, too.”

“He was not a nice person. He actually was quite good for poker, however, because he had this line of bullshit and a gift for gab. He was colorful, and he got on the Johnny Carson TV show and talked up poker and the World Series in a way that was entertaining and intriguing to a whole country full of amateur poker players. He did a lot of things that were good for poker, but as a person, he was a snake.”

Some other interesting notes in Poker Pioneer include getting kicked out of a casino while playing blackjack, going bankrupt, failed marriages, lawsuits, and bad business decisions. He was even hired to run the WSOP at one point, but was fired the day before the series began.

McEvoy leaves no stone unturned and not only reveals things about other players but also about himself. That included losing one of his gold bracelets in quite a unique scenario.

“As a way to relax and get my mind off poker, I enjoyed playing Pac-Man and had become a pretty good player,” he writes. “In Hawaii, I went to an arcade by myself. I was playing Pac-Man when I ran out of quarters. I had been wearing my limit hold’em bracelet, and my wrist got sweaty, so I took it off and set it on top of the machine. I went to get more quarters — wasn’t gone more than a couple minutes, and when I got back — no bracelet. Unfortunately, I no longer have any of my four World Series of Poker bracelets.”

The book isn’t just about revealing negative aspects of some characters in the poker world. He also offers some deep praise for Matt Savage, T.J. Cloutier, Jack Binion, and others. Phil Hellmuth also wrote the foreword. But McEvoy hopes poker fans will enjoy reading about the ups and downs that come with a life in the game, but also how poker has changed since the old days. Today’s poker players may be able to learn a few lessons from this poker pioneer.

“The book offers the absolute truth about my life and career,” he says. “It will tell what it takes to be a successful professional poker player and the pitfalls to avoid.” ♠