A Review of televised pre-Moneymaker Main Events Part 4: 1983
After a long break, I’m going back to historic coverage of the WSOP Main Event. 1983 was the year of the fourteenth World Series of Poker. In it, we see a record number of entries. 108 people entered the event, the second in a row to breach over 100 players, and a prize pool of over $1,000,000, half of which will go to the winner.
At the start of the broadcast, Host Curt Goudy and 1978 champion Bobby Baldwin go through the introduction of the game and show a golden horseshoe with $1,000,000 inside. They also mention that there is more diversity in the Main Event because there are more amateurs, young players, and women than ever before, and they have a decent shot of taking it down. We then are introduced to 1982 winner Jack “Treetop” Strauss, who was down to one gray chip and was able to come back to win the whole tournament. However, Strauss started card dead and was unable to get momentum, so he was an early casualty.
Our first major pot comes between Amarillo Slim and Tom MacEvoy. Slim is shown to have pocket 6s, giving him a set with a 6 on the flop. However, the turn was an ace, and MacEvoy, all in, shows one of his cards, an ace. If the other hole card is an ace, then Tom has the winner. Slim, after tanking and having the clock called on him, folds, and we never know what Tom’s second card was. We then get a segment talking about formidable female players, including Barbara Enright, then Freer, who in 1995 would go on to be the only woman to make the final table of the Main Event, before or since. We see her take a pot, and at another table, Gabe Kaplan loses one.
After the commercial break, We get small interviews from Benny Binion and Doyle Brunson, household names from this poker era. Doyle is in the final three, with Tom MacEvoy and Rod Peate. Doyle and Peate get into a massive pot, but Doyle’s Diamond draw is no match for Peate’s flopped set of 9s. Doyle is knocked out in third, and Peate has the chip lead. But that lead doesn’t last long, as in a raised pot, Tom MacEvoy goes all in and stares dead into Peate, and Peate ultimately folds. The last hand has MacEvoy move in with Queens, and Peate calls with King Jack of Diamonds. While the turn brings a scare card in the Jack of Hearts, The river bricks out for Peate, making Tom MacEvoy the 14th World Series of Poker Champion.
My main criticism of this coverage is that it’s too fast-paced. We’re entering a strange region between the years when the field was too big to cover everyone, and the sport was too niche to justify a larger production value and longer TV schedule. As a result, we don’t get to see the journey of Tom MacEvoy in the event, so it leaves the viewer less satisfied. I still had fun watching, but I’m grateful for the vast coverage the post-2003 events got.
