The Big One at the Bike

Date: 2005.10.03 | Category: Hand Of The Week | By: Phil Hellmuth   

This year the $5,000 buy-in World Poker Tour (WPT) tournament at the Bicycle Club in Los Angeles brought out more than 800 entrants (with a first place of $1.1 million). This championship finale, capping a one-month-long series of tournaments in August, has some serious history and prestige, and has been on all the top poker players’ schedules for 17 years running. And that prize pool has changed over those years! Way back when, in 1988, I won this event and a whopping $145,000, out of a prize pool of $365,000. In 1989, I finished in third place, and the prize pool had already risen to $800,000. But about 1996, that upward trend reversed course, and by 2001 a mere 32 players entered, fighting for a prize pool of just $160,000.

Of course, in 2005, with 816 players, the prize pool was $4,07 million! With that many players, we had to have a split two-day start, and I drew day one. I made it through Saturday (day 1), and came back to face the other 301 players on Monday. Things didn’t go well for me in the first couple of hours of play, and my starting chip stack of $24,000 was now down to $8,200.