How the World Series of Poker Began: Reno to Las Vegas

The World Series of Poker began in May 1970 at Binion’s Horseshoe on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, but it was not a tournament. It was a gathering of professional gamblers who played cash games for about a week and a half and then voted on who was the best among them. Johnny Moss, then 63, won the vote and a silver cup. According to Card Player, there were fewer than 50 poker tables in all of Las Vegas at the time.

That modest event had a precursor. A year earlier, a Reno hotel owner named Tom Moore had invited gamblers to a Texas Gamblers Reunion, and the Horseshoe’s owner, Benny Binion, watched it closely. This article follows the path from Reno in 1969 to the first knockout tournament in 1971, the publicity that followed and the growth through 1979, when the Main Event passed 50 entrants. It also notes where the sources disagree, including who deserves the credit and how many players took part in 1970.

Reno, 1969: The Gathering Before the Series

The idea did not begin with Binion. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, Holiday Hotel owner Tom Moore had held a Gaming Fraternity Convention in 1968 for high-stakes gamblers playing craps, roulette and blackjack, and it proved a disappointment. In 1969 he tried again with an invitational poker gathering called the Texas Gamblers Reunion. The Reunion was meant to fill rooms in the slowest season of the year, writes James McManus in Card Player, and it was the idea of Moore’s adviser, Vic Vickrey.

The guest list was a roll call of the era’s gambling world. McManus names Texas road gamblers Johnny Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston, Doyle Brunson and Brian “Sailor” Roberts, along with Walter “Puggy” Pearson, broadcaster Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder and the pool hustler Rudolph Wanderone Jr., known as Minnesota Fats. Benny Binion and his son Jack also attended. The group rotated through several poker variants for six or seven days, according to McManus, and Moss was honored with a silver cup.

Moore did not repeat the event. PokerNews reports that he told Binion it had not earned enough, because the guests stayed at the poker tables instead of the casino’s other games. Binion asked whether Moore would mind if he held a similar gathering at the Horseshoe, and Moore said he would not.

Las Vegas, May 1970: The First World Series

In May 1970 the Horseshoe had no poker room, because floor space for slot machines and pit games earned more. McManus reports that the baccarat alcove was fitted with three tables for the occasion. The invited players spent ten or eleven days on five-card draw, deuce-to-seven draw, seven-card stud, razz and no-limit hold’em, in his account, while PokerNews puts the length at about a week and a half and adds five-card stud, ace-to-five lowball and high-low seven-card stud to the list. Jimmy Snyder, who had just opened a public relations office in Las Vegas, volunteered to promote the event and, with the Binions, invited most of the men on Moore’s list.

Among the three dozen or so people McManus says showed up were Jack Straus, Moss, Brunson, Jimmy Casella, Preston and the singer and actor Chill Wills. Benny Binion was 66 that year, according to McManus, and the title that mattered was settled afterward by ballot.

The champion was chosen by a vote of the players. At a dinner in the Horseshoe’s Sombrero Room, they named Moss champion, McManus writes, and he received a silver trophy and kept what he had won at the tables. Straus was voted most congenial. The WSOP’s own history gives a different cast: it says Binion invited seven players, Moss, Preston, Roberts, Brunson, Pearson, Crandell Addington and Carl Cannon, who played a no-limit hold’em cash game and then voted.

As publicity, the first Series did little. Greg Dinkin writes in Card Player that it drew some attention but did not capture the public the way Binion had hoped, because the event had no structure: the players simply played, and then voted.

Turning Points: The Freezeout and the Publicity Tour

The turning point came from a newspaper reporter. Ted Thackrey Jr., sent by the Los Angeles Times, found days of cash games dull and advised the Binions to make it a contest, according to McManus. He writes that Preston and Pearson persuaded Binion to replace the vote with a no-limit hold’em freezeout, in which no one may rebuy and play continues until one player holds all the chips. PokerNews adds that Preston later told the story with himself as the author of the winner-take-all idea.

In 1971, six players put up $5,000 each and played for two days. Moss outlasted Pearson heads-up and won the $30,000 prize, PokerNews reports, while four preliminary events with $1,000 buy-ins ran alongside. In 1972 the Main Event buy-in rose to $10,000, with Binion covering $5,000 for each of the eight players, and Preston won $80,000. McManus adds that a second winner-take-all event that year, a $5,000 five-card stud tournament, was won by Bill Boyd. From 1973 the full $10,000 was paid by every entrant, a price that, PokerNews noted in 2017, had not changed since.

Aftermath: Publicity, Bracelets and Growth

Preston turned his title into a tour. McManus says he wrote Play Poker to Win, appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and was invited back eleven more times, and also appeared three times on 60 Minutes. In 1973 CBS filmed a documentary narrated by Snyder. That year 13 players each paid $10,000 and Pearson won the entire $130,000 prize pool, PokerNews reports.

The field then grew almost every year, by PokerNews’s count: 16 entrants in 1974, 21 in 1975, 22 in 1976, 34 in 1977, 42 in 1978 and 54 in 1979. The event stayed winner-take-all until 1978, when the prize pool began to be shared; first prize was $210,000 that year, half of the $420,000 pool, and $270,000 in 1979. Gold bracelets were first awarded in 1976, according to the WSOP, replacing trophies. The Main Event had grown ninefold between 1971 and 1979, from 6 players to 54.

As the Series grew, Jack Binion hired Eric Drache to organize events, according to McManus, and by 1987 some fields were so large that players were seated at neighboring casinos, the WSOP’s archived history says. Benny Binion died on Christmas Day, 1989.

Myths, Disputes and the Other Side

The credit for starting the Series is disputed. Binion is widely credited, but the WSOP’s own archived history says the laurels should probably go to Moore and Vickrey. The vote story is also told as fact on the WSOP site: every player supposedly voted for himself, so a second vote for second-best was taken, and Moss won it. Card Player‘s Ryan Lucchesi introduces it with the words “according to legend,” and none of the accounts consulted cites a record of the ballots.

Other points differ by source. McManus says three dozen people attended in 1970, while the WSOP says seven were invited. McManus says Moss was named best at Reno in 1969, while Dinkin says no winner was declared there. The WSOP dates its $10,000 freezeout to 1972; PokerNews and McManus place the first freezeout in 1971.

There is also a record of friction. In 1972, Brunson recalls in his memoir, as told by PokerNews, that he and Pearson played recklessly to let Preston win and were stopped at a meeting with Jack Binion and Snyder. The players, Card Player notes, used their own money.

Timeline: Reno to the First 54-Player Main Event

Dates and figures below come from the sources listed at the end of the article.

What Comes Next in Poker History

The Series’s first decade is the start of poker’s move from back rooms to a public contest. Later chapters include the growth of the Horseshoe’s fields, the arrival of television coverage and the hole-card camera, each of which deserves its own account. The older roots are murkier: Britannica dates them to 1949 matches between Moss and Nick Dandolos, and the WSOP’s profile of Moss says no official records were kept, so reported winnings are estimates.

Binion’s use of a casino event to draw crowds has a precedent in the casino resort François Blanc built at Monte Carlo, told in the history of roulette. Both stories show how an operator’s publicity instinct shaped the way a game was played and watched.

Sources & References

• World Series of Poker — WSOP History
• World Series of Poker — WSOP History (archived version, 2017)
• World Series of Poker — Johnny Moss profile (2009)
• James McManus, Card Player — The World Series of Poker, Part I (2008)
• Greg Dinkin, Card Player — How the World Series of Poker Came to Be (2006)
• Ryan Lucchesi, Card Player — WSOP History: 1970 Recap (2008)
• Martin Harris, PokerNews — History of the World Series of Poker Main Event: 1970-1979 (2017)
• Guy Clifton, Reno Gazette-Journal — No bluffing, World Series of Poker started in Reno (2012)
• Britannica — World Series of Poker