World Series Offers Memories for a Lifetime

The just-completed 32nd annual World Series of Poker offered the poker world quite a few moments that it won't ever forget.

You'll be reading about these moments over the course of the next year, as Card Player publishes the reports I sent to the web each night, but I want to whet your appetite with some of the more amazing ones here.

At the top of the list comes the memorable duel between Erik Seidel and Johnny Chan in the $3,000 no-limit hold'em event. If you saw the movie Rounders, you know that it includes actual footage from the moment when Chan won his second consecutive world championship, trapping the then-young and inexperienced Seidel into moving in with a pair of queens when Chan held the nut straight.

In the time since, Seidel has become, at least within the poker world, almost as much of a legend as Chan is, but for the rest of the world, his 15 minutes of fame came too soon, when he was just getting started in poker, and it can't have been easy having that particular moment selected as the one point in actual poker history to go into worldwide distribution for the masses.

Seidel and Chan eventually got heads up for the title, with Chan starting with a huge chip lead that soon grew even larger, but as you'll read in far greater detail here later in the year, Seidel eventually came back and won a match that was professional poker at its finest. It probably still doesn't make up for Rounders, because this rematch won't make the movie sequel (unless they tap me to write the script), but it was certainly a wonderful moment of redemption for Seidel.

The very next night, the poker world got "treated" to a darker side of poker, a final that was in its own right just as exciting, but not as professional, when 1998 World Champion Scotty Nguyen squared off in the Omaha eight-or-better championship against 1989 World Champion Phil Hellmuth.

I've always liked Scotty and have always been impressed with his graciousness with the poker public. He signs autographs, happily allows people to take photos with him, is very funny at the table, and in my opinion is the best Omaha player in the world.

On this particular night, Scotty decided to use trash talking as a weapon against the one guy in the poker world with whom he could probably get away with it, Hellmuth, who has talked a fair amount in his own life.

Scotty went too far with it (again, you'll read the full details here at a later date), and apologized to Hellmuth two days later, when they both left the nearby seats in which they had so providentially landed in the Big One. The two players went out into the hallway, and talked for about 10 minutes while their hands were being folded for them during tournament action. I was proud of both of them in that moment.

Few people gave Hellmuth much of a chance to recover from the emotionally draining defeat to Nguyen in time to start the Big One, but Hellmuth picked himself up off the floor and went on to finish fifth. He had quite a World Series, winning the $2,000 no-limit hold'em event (against a final table that included eventual runner-up T.J. Cloutier, Layne Flack, Steve Rydel, and Stan Goldstein), the second to Nguyen, a sixth, a ninth, and two other cashes, for a total of seven in-the-money finishes.

Because the Big One is such an important part of the World Series, I give Hellmuth a narrow win over Chris "Jesus" Ferguson as the best overall player in the 2001 WSOP. Ferguson also won an event, and had six other cashes, an incredibly impressive performance given that as the defending champion, he was always in the media's eye, and always had the other players gunning for him.

In sports, champions usually find it difficult to repeat, because everyone "gets up" for their game against the defender, so Ferguson did himself proud. Because Ferguson was also easily the best overall player at the 2000 Series, I believe (I'm willing to stand corrected by someone with a better grasp of poker history) his back-to-back years in 2000 and 2001 are the best two consecutive overall World Series anyone has ever had, and yes, I'm aware that Chan, Stu Ungar, and Doyle Brunson have won the Big One back to back.

Third best overall goes to Scotty Nguyen, who won two events, one of them in an unbelievably impressive comeback over Jim "Cincinnati Kid" Lester, my pick as fourth best overall. Lester won another event himself and made two other final tables.

If you didn't follow my stories daily on the web, I hope you will enjoy them throughout the year here in Card Player (where I will have had a little time to polish them; writing 4,000-6,000 words a night without an editor and going straight to the web is a bit tricky). Heck, I hope you enjoy them here even if you did enjoy them there.

Andy Glazer is the weekly gambling columnist for the Detroit Free Press and the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way. He is also the online poker guide for www.poker.casino.com, and welcomes your questions and comments.