He was one of the last players to have managed to win the World Series of Poker twice in a row and that too, back to back. His game play has been so fascinating that it was also featured in the movie Rounder’s. Johnny Chan has an orange which stays by his side during all his important matches and is known to give him luck. Johnny Chan Chases Another Main Event Bracelet. 'If I could achieve one more thing in poker, I’d like to win another Main Event.' Whatever variant of poker he sits down to play, Johnny.
Like actors labeled 'overnight sensations,' Johnny Chan moved slowly up the feeding chain of professional poker players and hit the big-time at the 1987 World Series of Poker. Suddenly everybody had heard of him. But several years before that, in 1983, top oddsmaker (and owner of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas) Jackie Gaughan listed a 'John Chan' as an 80-1 shot to win the championship event of the WSOP.
You can't blame Gaughan for listing Johnny there, he wasn't exactly a household name, but that was a higher price than even players like Barbara Freer, Gabe Kaplan, and Aubrey Day. Don't get me wrong, those are very fine players, but Johnny was the same odds as Berry Johnston, and Johnston had taken third-place the year before! Of course it was Johnston who actually won the event first, taking down the top prize in 1986, so maybe just being listed was a true measure of each player's potential.
Johnny was born in 1957, in Canton, China. His family moved to Hong Kong in 1962, and then settled in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Johnny must have liked the desert, because after moving to Houston in 1973 and attending college (where he majored in hotel and restaurant management), he traveled on to the sunny skies of Las Vegas.
Although his father hoped he would apply his college learning to the family restaurant in Houston, Johnny was more interested in poker, and took his full bankroll of $120 with him to Vegas in 1978. Like many other players, Chan learned the hard way that the life of a professional poker player can be tough, and a short bankroll is often a killer of dreams.
Within a week, Johnny was broke and looking for work. The games were certainly different than the nickel-dime-quarter ones he had played at the University of Houston. He pawned his jewelry, got a job, and kept playing in low-limit games until he understood some of the basic ways to beat both the tourists and the grind-em-out locals. Eventually, Johnny quit his casino job to play full-time again, and this time it was for keeps.
He moved steadily from the $1-3 seven-card stud and $2-4 hold'em games up to $15-$30, and began playing the occasional no-limit games. There weren't many, but $22 tournaments were abundant, and many of those were of the no-limit variety that Johnny had taken a liking too. His versatility paid off when Johnny won a ½ seven-card-stud and ½ hold'em event at the Golden Nugget.
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That year, 1982, Johnny also won theAmerica's Cup Championship at Bob Stupak's Vegas World Casino, and it was Stupak who christened Johnny 'The Orient Express.'
By 1983, when Jackie Gaughan listed him as an 80-1 dog to win the WSOP Championship, Johnny was just beginning to pick-up speed. He won the Stairway to the Stars no-limit Championship, and won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in 1985 during a limit tournament. The following year, during the Frontier Casino's Triple Crown Classic, Johnny won three events, and in 1987, Johnny won the Diamond Jim Brady Main Event Championship. Was he on a roll?
You bet! But he found himself up against one of the toughest final tables ever at the 1987 World Series of Poker Championship. Joining Johnny on the final day were Eldon Elias, Frank Henderson, Jim Spain, Jack Keller, Howard Lederer (who made the final table in his first major tournament), Dan Harrington, Mickey Appleman, and Bob Ciaffone. If that isn't a line-up of poker talent, I don't know what is!
As players dropped away, the long, see-saw battle continued, and it looked like Bob Ciaffone would eventually wear down the less experienced Chan, and the lesser known pro from Houston, Frank Henderson, but poker is a game of changing values. One hand wins with ace-high, and the next you lose with a full-house. Bob Ciaffone mentioned after the event that he was unhappy having the distinction of losing the first million-dollar pot in WSOP history, and it was Johnny who beat him, sending Bob to a third-place finish.
Later in the evening, in an all-in pot, Chan beat Henderson's pocket pair of fours with an ace-nine, when a nine spiked the river. Henderson headed home with a quarter of a million dollars, and Chan won a whopping $655,000.
Johnny had obviously arrived upon the poker scene, but his championship win in the very next year's WSOP main event is the thing of legends. This time, Johnny faced a young Erik Seidel when the final table reached heads-up. Seidel had yet to perfect his short-handed skills, but Erik's second place finish is no less amazing than Chan's second consecutive championship, as it was only the second major tournament the young man had ever played.
The trend of young players entering the WSOP in the late 1980's continued, as the 1989 championship event saw Chan heads-up at the final table against Phil Hellmuth. After Phil's pocket nines held-up against Chan's ace-seven, Phil became the youngest player ever (at 24 years of age) to win the championship. The win kept Johnny from taking the crown three straight years.
Nonetheless, Johnny has now won a total of nine WSOP bracelets, and was elected into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2002. His legend grew larger when he appeared in the popular movie 'Rounders,' staring Matt Damon. Johnny played himself, and was billed in the movie as the 'best poker player in the world.' That title is hard to argue with.
At the table, Johnny is often friendly and talkative. He believes you need to make a serious effort to present a good table image to go from just a wage-earner to a world-class player. He stays busy at home (where he and his wife have six children), as well as at the poker table, and has recently finished his first book on poker. He also owns a restaurant in the Stratosphere Hotel Casino in Las Vegas.
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No other player has more WSOP bracelets than Chan (Hellmuth and Brunson both have nine also). Can we expect Johnny to earn a 10th WSOP bracelet? I wouldn't bet against him. I wonder if I can still get 80-1 odds?
To say that Johnny Chan is an iconic poker player is an understatement. Chan, World Champion in back-to-back years in 1987 and 1988, is perhaps the most well-known player in poker. He also bridges the historical gap between the sepia-toned coverage of pre-Moneymaker World Series Main Events with the new post-Rounders world, not least because he appeared in the 1998 movie.
With the $50,000 Poker Players Championship well into Day 2, the man known as the Orient Express and The Master is above average in chips against the best in the business. He’s in no mood to slow down.
'If I could achieve one more thing in poker, I’d like to win another Main Event.'
“It’s very exciting. You play against the best players in the world, not only in one game but in all forms of poker. Stud, 8 or better, Omaha, Hold’em, it’s an exciting tournament and the greatest players in the world are in it right now.”
The Orient Express is currently building up a head of steam, and much of that comfort within each format of poker is down to experience. Many players, even some of the most successful ones still involved in trying to win one of the most prestigious tournaments available each year at the Rio, don’t have Chan’s inside out know-how of the variants.
“I’ve been playing mixed games since the late eighties. We started with just two games, Hold’em and Stud and they were first legalized in California as the games of the future. A few years later there came Omaha, Triple Draw, Badugi and Badacey, but there are now so many new formats of poker coming, I don’t know what game will be new tomorrow.”
Chan was one of the biggest stacks on Day 1 and has carried that momentum into the second day. He’s also the biggest draw on the rail. While players such as Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth command attention and deserve respect, Chan has something else. There is a reverence that goes beyond poker and so much of his appeal is his enduring charm. There might not be a more popular Main Event champion. It’s 30 years since the 1987 Main Event where Chan defeated Frank Henderson to win $625,000, more than double the second place prize.
“It was very exciting. I would never have dreamed back then that I’d win the major [tournament]. I was very happy to get my picture on the wall like all the World Champions before me.”
In 1988, it got even better, in a victory Chan credits as his most memorable. He triumphed in the Main Event again for what was a stunning back-to-back win against Erik Seidel. After flopping a queen-high straight, Chan trapped Seidel with his famous ‘look to the sky’ and the rest was history.
In the 1998 film Rounders, Chan’s magical moment at the World Series served as the inspiration for the movie’s protagonist Mike McDermott, played by Matt Damon. Chan remembers the filming with great affection.
'It’s a huge film and was great for poker. It was a privilege to meet Matt Damon and Ed Norton.'
“It’s a huge film and was great for poker. It was a privilege to meet Matt Damon and Ed Norton. People say that’s the greatest poker movie ever made, and that’s what made poker what it is today. Everybody watched that movie and wanted to be like Johnny Chan or Matt Damon!”
It’s a movie that Damon himself remembers as one of his favorite experiences off-set and that feeling is shared by the man he memorably bluffs in a defining scene in the movie. Damon’s character McDermott tells Joey Knish how he got the better of Johnny Chan at a cash table. When it came to walking the actors through the game, Chan told us that they were attentive to his tips.
“They were beautiful human beings and very nice [to be around]. They were quick learners. I taught them a few hands of Hold’em and they picked it right up. They were very friendly and first class people.”
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Chan may have won back-to-back World Series Main Events in 1988, but he had the chance to make it three in a row against a player he shares the field with today. Phil Hellmuth, then the youngest winner of the Main Event at 24 years old, got the better of Chan and beat The Master heads-up to prevent what would surely remain as an unbeatable record of three Main Event wins in a row. Chan has never forgotten the defeat and has regrets from that final confrontation 28 years ago.
“Back in 1989, if I knew what poker was going to be like today, I would have played a little harder. I would have been a little tougher. It didn’t mean anything special to me in 1989, it was just another day at the office. I didn’t play my A-Game and I got punished for it. I finished second, but if I had that opportunity again, I’d bring my A-Game.”
Play ammo casino affiliate. 'It didn’t mean anything special to me in 1989, it was just another day at the office.
I didn’t play my A-Game and I got punished for it.'
Chan may well get the chance for personal revenge if he and Hellmuth continue to negotiate the Poker Players Championship field. But whatever happens, Chan is clearly still delighted to be playing the game he loves.
“I travel all around the world and have met all kinds of people. I have the opportunity to enjoy my life and I’m nearly 60 years old now. I’m kinda retired! But if I could achieve one more thing in poker, I’d like to win another Main Event.”
Whatever variant of poker he sits down to play, Johnny Chan guarantees fans on the rail, memories in the hearts of everyone watching him play and a popularity which will outlive even The Master. Whenever Johnny Chan stops playing, the game he helped to grow will keep growing.
At the time of this interview, Johnny Chan was playing the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. Unfortunately, he busted on Day 2. Follow the progress of this tournament, right here on PokerNews.com.
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