Poker News

Tom McEvoy: 1983 World Series of Poker Champion

Tom McEvoy remembers it as “the biggest career break” of his life, getting fired from an accounting job in Grand Rapids, MI.,

May 11, 1978, the last day he ever worked in the “corporate business world.” There was suddenly plenty of time to think about, well . . . maybe playing more poker.

Before the year was out he and his family - a wife and three kids - would be living in Las Vegas.

“I had decided that before I thought about going back to work in any kind of regular job I would give Vegas a try.”

What he did for a while was fly back and forth between Grand Rapids and Vegas, but the logic of a full time residence in close proximity to the card rooms on the Strip and along Fremont Street soon became apparent.

So the McEvoys headed west with a new car, a $5,000 bankroll and plans that were a bit uncertain.

“But I never looked back,” he says.

McEvoy and poker were not exactly strangers when he made the move.

“I had been making money playing poker for years, kind of supplementing my paycheck. There were a lot of times when I won more in a five-dollar home or basement game than I had in my entire check for the week. But he had been trained as an accountant and people did not quit their day jobs to play poker full time . . . did they?

The eye-opener for McEvoy had come in December 1977 when he traveled to Las Vegas to participate in a national table tennis tournament at Caesars Palace. As it turned out, Caesars had a poker room and he remembers, “I spent more time with the poker than I did with the table tennis and made about a thousand dollars. It was easy for me to do the arithmetic, to see the possibilities since my annual salary as an accountant back then was only about eighteenthousand.”

There were still plenty of things to learn as he began to get serious about life as a Las Vegas poker pro,

“For instance, I did not know how to play Texas hold ‘em and was determined to find out.”

He was a good student.

McEvoy won the World Series of Poker’s championship no limit hold ‘em in 1983 by beating back the challenge of second place finisher Rod Peate in a grueling heads-up marathon that went on for more than seven hours.

He also won the limit hold ‘em event the same year, and in 1986 he won the razz gold bracelet and in 1992 added the limit Omaha high bracelet. And was second or third seven other times.

He’s finished in the money 30 times at the WSOP, 32 times if you count two of the WSOP circuit events played this year at the Rio.

His first time in the championship no limit Texas hold ‘em event was 1983, but three years earlier he had first tried his luck at the World Series when he played in a $525 sevencard stud event. He entered a hold ‘em tournament in 1982 and then had his first money finish in 1982 when he finished sixth in a razz tournament.

The world of poker has exploded over the last two decades and McEvoy, who just finished his 12th book on poker related matters, says, “There is just no comparison with what it is now to what it was back then.”

Two very different worlds, he says.

McEvoy has participated in every World Series finale since then, a streak, which he says, has been equaled or surpassed by only one other player.

“The only other player to have a longer unbroken streak than me is Berry Johnston. He’s been in it each year for a year or two longer but doesn’t play much any more so I don’t know how much longer he’ll keep it up.”

McEvoy makes it clear he has every intention of spending as much time as possible at this year’s World Series and other major tournament stop, particularly since his affiliation with PokerStars.com means he no longer has to sweat coming up with the entry money.

What does this affiliation require?

“I represent them wherever I can, sort of talk up their events and of course wear their insignia.”

Kind of like Tiger flaunting the Nike “swoosh,” huh?

“That’s it,” he grins.

There’s a challenge match each week that enables the qualifying player to take on McEvoy for a thousand-dollar prize. If McEvoy wins, as he recently did for five consecutive weeks, the prize increases a thousand each week.

So does he remember the final hand of the 1983 championship?

“Oh yeah,” saying it as though who could forget something like that?

“The very final hand, I had pocket queens and Rod had a king and a jack of diamonds. The blinds had gotten up to what was a new record at that time, eight and sixteen thousand.”

The queens stood up, and that was that, but at one point in that heads-up competition, Peate had enjoyed about a four to one advantage in chips. “He had about eight-hundred-thousand to my two-hundred- thousand,” McEvoy says. By the time they got to that final hand, McEvoy had about seven-hundred-thousand to Peate’s roughly three-hundred-thousand.

The World Series championship event has grown each year since then, in terms of the number of people participating, but McEvoy has come up dry. He says, “I have not made the final table or finished in the money since then in that event.”

He gives the remark a little laugh and adds, “although, I sure have tried.”

Poker continues to have a to have a lot of growth potential in every direction as far as McEvoy is concerned.

“I think it is still expanding and will continue to expand for at least two more years., maybe as long as five years, but at some point it will begin to level off. There’s so much new blood in the game now, so much fascination with it. The number of TV programs based on live poker will probably reach a saturation point, but I don’t think even this part of poker will disappear. The interest is just too strong.”

He thinks about this for a moment and adds, “To me, poker is the ultimate reality show, not just a bunch of contrived BS unless you happen to be watching some of this celebrity poker stuff.”

Watch people playing for tens of thousands of dollars at any given moment, McEvoy says, “and what you’re seeing is the real thing . . . In some of these invitationals with lots of money at stake, they’re playing for blood.”

The poker boom makes McEvoy think of a conversation years ago when he was saying poker would never be much of a spectator sport until the people watching it could see the hole cards and have a sense of what’s going on.

He notes, “You didn’t have to be a prophet to see what had to happen.” And when the people with mini-camera technology discovered poker, big things happened in a hurry.

McEvoy cites other examples ofchange that sometimes exceeded expectations.

“It was the same way with this thing about smoking. For years and years and years, so many people dug their heels in with regard to smoking at tournaments. They just resisted any suggestion of a change,” he says. “There were fears that they would lose players if they took away the cigarettes, but what eventually happened was that the attendance was suddenly bigger than ever.”

The way McEvoy divides his time now . . . when there is a big tournament that has his attention, he’ll go over there and stay busy with the tournaments and the satellites. When the tournament is going on, he’ll focus on the tournament and not pay attention to the side action.

“When there is not any tournament to pay attention to or when I come home,” he says, “I play a lot of side action, but what I do at home is play on-line. You know, I live in Las Vegas and have for years, but I spend a lot more time playing on line than I do in any of the casinos, except for the tournaments.”

What does he like about on-line poker?

What’s not to like about it McEvoy seems to say with a short laugh. For one, it’s amore efficient use of time and he can play many more hands than is possible in a live casino game.

How many?

“I know this one fellow,” he says, “who talks about playing up to eight games at once, but I think that’s a little ridiculous. You lose something. I can do a good job with two games. I’ve tried three and four at a time.”

If he’s playing a big online game and, as far as he’s concerned that would be something with blinds of 5 and 10 or 10 and 20 in an Omaha or no limit hold ‘em game, or maybe 30 and 60 limit, he’ll usually stick to playing one game at a time.

He says, “Anything smaller than that I’ll almost always play two games.”

McEvoy has completed filming of the first disk in a three-disk set of instructional DVDs for Poker Think Inc. For more information go to the website at pokerthink.com

His 12th book, this one on low-limit hold ‘em tournaments co-authored with Don Vines will be out in the next couple months.

And then there is the pressure created by continued success to keep traveling.

He won the $225,000 first prize in a Professional Poker Tour-sponsored $500,000 free-roll for qualified pros at the Bay 101 Club in San Jose in mid- March and then put the money to good use, treating himself to the purchase of some investment property in Las Vegas.

April was mostly full of WPT-related action at the Bellagio. The end of April he headed to Reno for a special appearance at a casino-sponsored event for high-rollers.

“I’m supposed to be one of the guest celebrities.” And then it’s off to Japan near the end of May for an all-expense-paid trip that will involve him in competition to select a Japanese player for a free entry in the championship event at this year’s World Series of Poker.

Grand Rapids was never like this.

[Editor’s Note: Visit the professional poker bio section for photo’s, tournament finishes and additional information on Tom McEvoy]

Filed under: Poker News