WSOP Top 10 Tuesday - from the World's Greatest Unknown WSOP Historian

Nice! What percentage of poetry/music/art was written under the influence of something? (Not mine, FTR.)

Bob Ciaffone
Wanted a set of guidelines to call his own.
With bridge and chess pretty well covered, in 2001, The Coach
Released the comprehensive Robert's Rules of Poker with nary a topic it didn't broach.

I literally just read Ciaffone's Poker Player Newspaper article series on his 1987 ME yesterday!

You forgot: Bob later devotes 5 pages of his book explaining that he coolly evaluated all the odds while the crowd melted down and decided that the call was correct, then made it, lost, and decided he was still correct.

Which book was that? Been a long time but what I remember was that while he did have to call, he’s always kicked himself for not checking the flop as it was very likely Chan had an ace from how it was played. Bob had played a lot with Chan before that tournament. And Frank might’ve been shorter than 10% too.

I do want to get another copy of his PL/NL book. I love his writing style.

No GTO here! 😃

How might one get a copy of those?

Other than Raymer going back to back, and Foxen & Dukie, BobÂ’s life mightÂ’ve changed more than anyone who was in position to win the ME had he done so. WouldÂ’ve sold a lot more books anyway.

Of course, poker didnÂ’t really start mainstreaming until the Esquire profile of Chan in April 1989. Bob probably gets grouped with Jack Keller & Berry Johnston in the HOF, which is more than OK.

Edit: Obviously Biggest Game in Town being printed over two issues of New Yorker in 1983 deserves mention too

Not That Guy

Outside of the poker community these WSOP players aren't nearly as famous as their namesakes (sorted roughly by how famous each pair is).

• 10. Chuck Thompson: The 1995 Main Event sixth place finisher wasn't a sportscaster for the Baltimore Colts and Orioles for over three decades nor did he announce for the 1954 NFL Championship Game or three World Series.
  
  
• 9. Carl Cannon: The 1982 Main Event final tablist (9th place) was not an American journalist.
  
  
• 8. Don Williams: The three-time bracelet winner and 1991 Main Event fourth place finisher wasn't inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010.
  
  
• 7. Buck Buchanan: The 1977 and 1978 Main Event final tablist was not a defensive tackle for the Kansas City Chiefs.
  
  
• 6. Tony Miles: The 2018 Main Event runner-up wasn't the first English chess grandmaster.
  
  
• 5. Qui Nguyen: The 2016 Main Event champ didn't write the screenplay for
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5109280/

  IMDb

  Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) ⭐ 7.3 | Animation, Action, Adventure
  (2021) nor write and direct the 2022 animated movie
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10298840/

  IMDb

  Strange World (2022) ⭐ 5.7 | Animation, Action, Adventure
  .
  
  
• 4. Phil Collins: The 2011 November Niner didn't sing with Genesis before going solo (including the appropriate title track of the 1984 movie,
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086859/

  IMDb

  Against All Odds (1984) ⭐ 5.9 | Action, Adventure, Crime
  .
  
  
• 3. Brad Daugherty: The 1991 Main Event champion wasn't the first pick of the 1986 NBA draft known as the "The Big Train".
  
  
• 2. Roger Moore: The Poker Hall of Famer didn't portray James Bond in seven movies from 1973 to 1985. (And 2005 Main Event 13th place finisher Bernard Lee didn't play M in the early Bond movies either.)
  
  
• 1. Jerry Yang: The 2007 Main Event champ didn't found Yahoo! in 1994 and become a billionaire.
  

Honorable Mention: Aaron Jones, Chan Ho Park, Craig Ferguson, Don Johnson, Eric Blair, Gary Hart, James Brown, James Hong, Jerry Jones, John Madden, Matthew Broderick, Michael Chang, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Nathan Chen, Neil Young, Pat Nixon, Peter Parker (yes, I know he's fictional), Peter Stastny, Philip Spector, Richard Dawson, Ron Darling, Rutherford Hayes, Stan Lee, Tom Brady, and William Ackerman.

It arrived yesterday. I had the basic concept of the Chan hand right but the details all wrong.

I’m

BTW I did not know Coach passed a couple years ago at 81. Certainly an alltime great all-around games player.

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2022/05/poker-columnist-bob-ciaffone-passes-away-at-age-81-41213.htm

pokernews

Noted Poker Author & Longtime Columnist Bob Ciaffone Passes Away at Age 81

Good one. I was not familiar with Thomas Keller, the chef.

Here's what he wrote in the July 13, 1987 edition of Poker Player Newspaper, page 5:

Interesting how Bob flips his and Chan’s positions; Bob being in BB makes more sense. Bob highly valued the chance to KO Chan. Frank though the low stack still had enough to be dangerous, though if IIRC he was more a stud specialist.

LMAO between two books and the contemporaneous newspaper article, Bob has himself in all three positions. Which one makes the most sense?

Rhett Butler says hi

Bob acted first on the flop so he can’t be on the button. It’s improbable to me that Chan limps on the button threehanded with KQ then meekly calls a 4xBB raise. My guess is Frank limped on the button with something like 33 76s, Bob raises on the semisteal from the SB, and Chan calls with position, getting a bit under 2-1, and a pretty good idea what Bob’s hand is.

Regardless itÂ’s a great example of the fallibility of human memory .

Excellent! He and Peter Parker can start a new list... just eight more to go.

Oddly, this might be my favorite list you've compiled yet just because it's such an odd, random criterion. (I'll let others opine on your actual flow.)

One thing that makes No. 3 challenging are the people who continue to mispronounce his name (despite it being said hundreds of times on multiple WSOP broadcasts). I still hear people say "tah-MAY-oh," as if it rhymes with the opening line from The Banana Boat Song.

Oh wow, I was thinking about making such a list when I was researching bracelet winners last summer. You obviously went way deeper than I did as I would have caught some of these, especially when I compiled this:

Rutherford Hayes? That's incredible. I wonder if there is any chance the guy is a descendent of our 19th President.

Not poker related, but one of my favorite names I ever encountered during my run in collegiate athletics was this: https://goseattleu.com/sports/mens-baske.... The guy was probably about 10 when the first movie came out, so I can't imagine how many "yeah baby" and "oh behave" lines he got from people who thought they were the first to do it.

Incredibly, or maybe not, Seiver finished 44th in that 2007 event. And Yoon is a guy I always forget about for some reason.

Sorry if IÂ’ve mentioned this before. When David Chiu won his first bracelet I got there when he was headup and heard somebody say the other guy was David Shu. I said thatÂ’s weird and he said thereÂ’s also a David Chew! Who it turns out finished 4th in the 1984 Main Event and made seven other final tables in the 80s. Eskimo Clark finished 4th in that event and he had the largest rail, for obvious reasons. A Moxie Ungar finished 6th.

I love old college team rosters. ThereÂ’s always a Brad Pittman or an elementary school teacher I had. Too bad Mike Jagger and Keith Richardson werenÂ’t teammates. The GOAT of this sort of thing is of courseÂ….

Thanks. I definitely want more variety on these lists, so despite getting scolded for my second one ("Best Official Player Names"), I'll keep trying to think outside the box.

Then I could have rhymed him with Scott Baio (with a bonus rhyme of "Happy Day-o" ;-)

#492 on my list of things I'd like to do but probably never will: Find audio clips of each player saying his or her own name. (If I really wanted to do it, this list would have been the starting point.)

Whenever I do research, I jot random things down. This list grew from the few obvious names to the ones here over about five years.

Without spending too much time going down this rabbit hole... the President Rutherford Birchard Hayes did name one son named Rutherford Platt, who named one of his sons Rutherford Birchard, which makes it ridiculously hard to figure out if the naming continued.

Unlucky.

Best Closers

To close out the year, here are the players who have finished the job the most often after reaching heads up in WSOP bracelet events (minimum 5 appearances) and the best players after they reach the final three (minimum 6 appearances).

Best Closers, Heads Up, Minimum 5 Appearances

• 7. Adam Friedman, 83.3% (5-for-6)
  
  
• 7. Berry Johnston, 83.3% (5-for-6)
  
  
• 7. Eli Elezra, 83.3% (5-for-6)
  
  
• 7. John Juanda, 83.3% (5-for-6)
  
  
• 7. Mike Mizrachi, 83.3% (5-for-6)
  
  
• 4. Brian Hastings, 85.7% (6-for-7)
  
  
• 4. Brian Rast, 85.7% (6-for-7)
  
  
• 4. Jay Heimowitz, 85.7% (6-for-7)
  
  
• 1. Brian Yoon, 100% (5-for-5)
  
  
• 1. Daniel Alaei, 100% (5-for-5)
  
  
• 1. Robert Mizrachi, 100% (5-for-5)
  

Twelve players are a perfect 4-for-4: Adrian Mateos, Asi Moshe, Bill Boyd, Brad Ruben, Dominik Nitsche, Farzad Bonyadi, Jeff Madsen, Julien Martini, Kevin Gerhart, Lakewood Louie, Max Pescatori, and Tom Schneider. Another 19 are 3-for-3, including Barbara Enright and Vanessa Selbst.

Rast had been a perfect 6-for-6 until he lost heads-up to David Eldridge in the 2024 $25,000 High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha.

Best Closers, Reached Final Three, Minimum 6 Appearances

• 5. Adrian Mateos, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 3rds])
  
  
• 5. Asi Moshe, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 3rds])
  
  
• 5. Dominik Nitsche, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 3rds])
  
  
• 5. Amarillo Slim Preston, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 2nds])
  
  
• 5. Joe Cada, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 2nds])
  
  
• 5. Loren Klein, 66.7% (4-for-6 [2 2nds])
  
  
• 3. Adam Friedman, 83.3% (5-for-7 [1 2nd & 1 3rd])
  
  
• 3. Kristen Foxen, 83.3% (5-for-7 [1 2nd & 1 3rd])
  
  
• 2. Johnny Moss, *75.0% (9-for-12 [2 2nds & 1 3rd])
  
  
• 1. Brian Hastings, 85.7% (6-for-7 [1 2nd])
  

* Johnny Moss's percentage is likely inflated by the fact that early events were winner-take-all, so he may have undocumented second- and third-place finishes. He's #12 on the heads-up list at 81.8% (9-for-11). The same may be true to a lesser extent for Preston.

Reducing the minimum to 5 appearances brings Yoon and Alaei back to the top at 5-for-5.

On the flip side, here are the players who have reached heads up the most times without earning a bracelet.

Worst Closers, Heads Up

• 4. 18 players tied, 0% (0-for-3): Brian Nadell, Brunno Botteon De Albuquerque, Bruno Fitoussi, Carl McKelvey, Cary Katz, Christopher Basile, Corey Paggeot, Dan Shak, Dustin Dirksen, Ed Smith, Kirill Gerasimov, Leondard August, Noli Francisco, Rene Mouritsen, Sam Trickett, Shawn Stroke, and Tony Lin
  
  
• 1. Allen Kessler, 0% (0-for-4)
  
  
• 1. Eric Drache, 0% (0-for-4)
  
  
• 1. Jason Stockfish, 0% (0-for-4)
  

Notes:

• Chad Brown was awarded an honorary bracelet on June 28, 2014 at a special ceremony at the Rio while he was in hospice care in New York after battling liposarcoma for three years.
  
• Eric Drache remarkably has only one other WSOP cash, and it was a third place finish, making him the worst closer after reaching the final three (0-for-5). None of the other winless players above has a third place finish.
  
• Mike Watson was the leader in this category with six heads up appearances and no wins until he took down the 2024 Online $1,000 No-Limit Hold 'Em 6-Max for $138,327, defeating a field of 1,052 players in July. He is still #22 at 14.3%, just ahead of Randy Ohel at 16.7% (1-for-6).
  
• Matt Glantz has reached the most final tables, 19, without winning a bracelet. The former leader was Dario Sammartino, who had made 25 final tables before taking down the 2024 $2,500 Mixed Omaha Hi-Lo / Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo in June for $222,703. Mike Watson was third on the list at 17 before this year.