Lost Champions of the WSOP

19:35
04 Apr

Winning the World Series of Poker Main Event, with the millions of dollars, the fame, and the lucrative future it promises, would seem to many of us a poker professional’s dream. For some, however, it has been the start of a nightmare.

For every Moneymaker, Raymer and Hachem– who went on to become household names and ambassadors for our game – there are those for whom the pressure and riches became too much.

Let’s look at how three-in-a-row of our ‘ Main Event Mighties’ have fallen.

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2006 Jamie Gold

When Jamie Gold stunned the poker world with his destruction of the final table back in 2006, knocking out seven of his eight opponents with a mixture of intelligent play, crazy bluffs, and remarkable table-talk, great things were expected of him.

His media background and voluble personality, coupled with the $12 million first prize, should have launched Gold’s poker career into the stratosphere.

However, almost immediately, he became the center of a storm which would ultimately reduce him to one of the most reviled and laughable figures in the poker world. How did this happen?

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Deal? What deal?

Well, his bracelet winning run in the Main Event had been funded as part of a deal with his friend Crispin Leyser. In return for Gold using his contacts to find players willing to play the event under the Bodog.com banner, Leyser would fund Gold’s $10K Main Event buy-in, with any winnings being split in half.

All well and good, a normal kind of deal one would think, except when you unexpectedly scoop $12million, paying out half seems rather a lot! At least this seemed to be Gold’s thinking, and so his WSOP bracelet win turned into a sordid legal battle which saw half of Gold’s winnings placed under a restraining order!

Eventually the matter was settled out of court, the sum paid to Leyser never officially released, and Gold was released by Bodog shortly before the deal was struck.

Unseemly, unnecessary, and not good for either Gold, or poker’s image on the world stage. As Cardplayer.com described it at the time:

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High Stakes Poker

Much of Gold’s bad press may have been well-deserved, some of it perhaps not, but the one thing which almost everyone agreed on was that Gold was not a top-class player. Although everyone needs a huge chunk of luck to prevail in the Main Event, Gold seemed to have more than most.

His true test occurred when he appeared on the TV show High Stakes Poker and was taken to the cleaners by the world’s best, including the likes of Doyle Brunson and Sammy Farha. That being said, he did manage to win the better part of a huge pot against Patrick Antonius in Season 4.

It wasn’t a huge poker success however, with ‘lucky Gold’ getting it all-in with his three Kings against Antonius’ turned Broadway straight, running it three times and seeing his 20percenter win two of them, taking down $495,867 of the $743,800 pot.

In the grand scheme of poker talent and skill, Gold was seen by most as a good player, but certainly nowhere near the level of the world’s best. That he could even get to play against them was courtesy of his WSOP win, and it didn’t help him either financially or to improve.

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Once bitten, twice shy..?

You might think that Gold would have learned his lesson and become a model poker pro, using his victory to promote himself and the game? Hmmm, not so much!

Soon after his big win, he was duking it out at high-stakes in games he could never win – some big name pros classing him as a ‘fish’ – and his share of the millions he won was quickly spent.

In 2010, the Borgata Casino filed a claim against him for a check which bounced – a check worth $52,279.47 –a New Jersey judge finding in favour of the casino. He was also dropped by the PPN (Poker Players Network) – a skin on Gold’s Cake Network sponsor.

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The price of Gold

In August 2013, Jamie Gold’s WSOP bracelet was up for auction - described on the The Heritage Auctions site as having "259 stones including over seven carats of diamonds and 120 grams of white and yellow gold. Rubies are inset to create the red of the heart and diamond suits, while a sapphire represents the spade and three black diamonds the clubs."

The reason why has never been made explicitly clear, with most people believing it was because he was broke, while those more charitable souls were inclined to believe he was doing it for one of the charities he supports. It finally went for $65,725.

Gold himself explained to CardPlayer magazine:

I’m not involved in the auction and will not be making $1 if it does end up being sold.”;

"I got myself into an odd situation,” stated Gold, adding that “The laws do not exist for cash games and taxes, but somehow they believe if you play at a high enough level, you should be taxed on your winnings and not on your losses. And not allowed to take your losses against it.”

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Gold on Gold?

Despite all the negativity surrounding Gold and his post-WSOP win exploits, it has to be said that his charity work has shown another side to the man.

According to his own website:

Whether this should be taken at face value is something else, but if true it does balance things out somewhat.

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Present day Gold

Although he could never replicate his huge success of 2006, nor stand the test against the world’s leading players, Gold has recently returned to the poker tables and proven he can at least be successful at a lower level.

Several cashes last year were followed by this week’s close second to Antonio ‘The Magician’ Esfandiari in the WSOP circuit $1,675 Main Event at the Bicycle Casino in L.A.

Can we expect more from Gold in the years to come? Only time will tell, but he will have to go some length to wipe the years of horror stories from the poker public’s memories!

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2007 Jerry Yang

The year after Gold took home the biggest prize in the WSOP ever, another controversial player was destined to best the field and walk off with the biggest prize in poker.

Jerry Yang, born in Laos but an ethnic Hmong, was an almost complete unknown when he won a satellite and slipped into the Main Event, eventually taking down the coveted gold bracelet and $8.25 million!

Like Gold, Yang stirred up a hornet’s nest of bad feeling throughout his winning run with his incessant table talk and inane chatter. Throughout the event, he was consistently evoking ‘divine help’ whenever he was in a race or in need of a card.

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The God Delusion?

As Steve Beuaregard explained it on Gamboool.com:

Beauregard, a Christian himself, further describes Yang’s behavior, stating:

Considering the biblical rules on gambling, this was probably not the best way for Yang to endear himself to fellow players or fans of the game, even if he did donate 10% of his winnings to charitable causes!

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The Aftermath

Aside from the charitable donations, Yang used part of his winnings to open a restaurant – which was generally a sensible idea as he showed little sign of true legendary poker skills either before or after his big payday – the decade to either side showing less than $200,000 in tournament winnings.

While most champions tend to push on from their big successes, appearing in big TV poker shows and the biggest games in town, Yang was an exception. He comes across as a very honest guy, telling PokerNews.com:

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IRS makes an appearance

Despite, or more accurately because of, his huge WSOP winnings, Yang found himself in serious trouble with the IRS, the US tax authority.

He faced a massive $900,000 tax bill which he paid, but then had several personal items seized and auctioned off by the IRS to help him meet his other tax commitments. This included his gold bracelet from his 2007 victory, and also the expensive watch presented to all the final table players that year.

The bracelet apparently went for the bargain price of $30,000 and the watch was up for sale on eBay not long afterwards, the seller stating:

The lucky buyer from the auction in Sacramento continued:

Quite a fall from grace, but really not so unusual in poker circles. Yang himself described the tax problems as due to his own “poor financial management” on a Fifth Street Radio poker podcast.

Beauregard mentions “problems with his account at the Bank of America, along with donations, gifts to family and friends, and bad financial advice lead to the outstanding federal tax bill and resulting fines and penalties. In the podcast, Yang took full responsibility for his financial problems.”

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Legacy or disgrace?

It seems, for some, that the price of poker stardom comes at huge personal cost – and not only of the financial variety. Both Yang and his predecessor Gold were singled out in 2014 for harsh criticism by Joe Hachem, apparently for “destroying the legacy of the world champ”.

If this seems like fair comment given what you’ve read so far, perhaps readers ought to reflect on the misdeeds of 2000 champion Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, and to a lesser extent 2004 champ Greg ‘Fossilman’ Raymer.

Pre-millenium times saw a host of WSOP Main Event champions indulge in a variety of dubious, unethica,l and outright illegal activities – so singling out Yang and Gold may have been a bit unfair.

Yang himself seems to think so, claiming he was “shocked” by Hachem’s comments and stating that his bracelet sale was not a disgrace to the game, saying:

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The here and now

Food, rather than poker, was always Yang’s dream – ever since he faced starvation as youngster – and with his tax problems well in the past, the former champ now runs two restaurants – the Dynamite Grill in Las Vegas, and one name after his final table winning hand - Pocket 8s Sushi and Grill in Merced, California. “I manage, I cook, you name it-I do it all!,” he told All-in magazine last year.

With little time for poker, he still managed a little cashout at last year’s WSOP Colossus event, but compared to the majority of our champions, Yang most definitely has poker on the back-burner, with little sign of change coming

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2008 Peter Eastgate

When Peter Eastgate became the youngest-ever WSOP Main Event champion at the age of 22, he had the poker world at his feet and most of his $9.1million in his pocket, having no stakers to pay off when he beat Ivan Demidov, heads-up, to snatch the bracelet.

And yet, just a few years later, Eastgate had renounced the game of poker, blown massive chunks of his payday on sportsbetting, tried and failed to launch a career in biomedicine, and been all but forgotten by the poker world.

And, so it seems, he is happy with this state of affairs!

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Beyond the World Championship

Eastgate has spoken quite openly about his time as a poker player and also his time away from the game. He explained to Cardplayer.com:

Describing his time as the youngest Main Event winner (which only lasted a year until Joe Cada took over that mantle) Eastgate explained why he was taking a break from the game:

This break, with a few exceptions, was to last almost until the present day.

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Sportsbetting

As we have already seen countless times in the poker world, having lots of money can be a huge problem! For Eastgate this problem was sportsbetting, telling a Swedish poker magazine that he lost $1.7million during the 2010 football World Cup.

Eastgate explained his sports betting problem by saying:

Compared to some others, however, Eastgate managed to find a way through his gambling problems – despite admitting to pokerlistings that he was “an addict" and "a degenerate gambler."

Combined with a clever method of penalising himself, Eastgate managed to put a halt to the self-destructive behaviour before it got to out of hand, explaining:

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Set for life

Just this month Eastgate explained to Pokerlistings that his sports-betting degeneracy didn’t wipe out his bankroll – far from it in fact!

it’s something that I don’t find very appealing.”;

His lifestyle didn’t require him to keep his WSOP bracelet either, an eBay auction which raised $147,500 saw the proceeds going to UNICEF and prompted one poster to comment:

The still-young man from Denmark has at least avoided all the tax problems and (sportsbetting aside) most of the controversy which surrounded his two predecessors, but, what's next for the 30-year old?

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The future is unknown

Peter Eastgate may not see poker in his future – he admits to playing $1/2 cash games and very occasional tournaments just for fun – but he also doesn’t see what else he can spend his time and money on.

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For every poker pro who hits the WSOP big-time and gone on to carve out a fantastic career in the poker world, it would seem that there is another who either can’t – or won’t – accept the responsibilities and limelight which come hand-in-hand with the elusive Main Event bracelet.

Gold, Yang, and Eastgate may have been an unusual hat-trick, but it’s unlikely that they will be the last in the long-line of candidates for How the Mighty have Fallen!