"All You Need Is A Chip And A Chair", Ken Adams On Come-From-Behind Successes At The Poker Table

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July 2, 2007

Ken Adams has had not one, but two, come-from-behind success stories at poker tournaments. (AP)

(CBS) American sports and folklore are full of epic tales in which the hero snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. The buzzer-beating basketball shot to win the championship, the Hail Mary pass with no time left on the clock, Truman�s 1948 election victory despite nationwide headlines proclaiming Dewey the winner.

The same thing occasionally happens in tournament poker. The ultimate example was the late Jack "Treetop" Strauss' come-from-behind victory in the 1982 World Series of Poker.

Strauss was one of the giants of poker in the days when the only thing harder for a professional poker player than winning money at the tables was collecting it and getting out of town in one piece. In Strauss' day there were no luxurious public card rooms or online poker sites run by regulated public corporations. You "faded the white line" � drove the highway � to whatever town was said to be fixin' to hold a big game, talked your way into the game, beat the game and ran for your life.

In the very first World Series of Poker, held at Binion's Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas in 1971, Strauss finished second to Johnny Moss, the dominant player of that decade. He never came that close again to a world championship until 1982.

At the 1982 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Strauss got involved in a huge pot against a lone opponent. When the last card was dealt, Strauss pushed all his chips into the pot on a bluff. When his opponent called it appeared that Strauss had been eliminated. He stood up from the table, put on his coat and prepared to depart. Then he noticed a single $500 chip on the table underneath a cocktail napkin alongside his drink. He was still alive, though barely so.

He took off his coat, sat back down, moved all-in on the next hand and won. He moved in again and doubled again. Two days later he had all the chips, beating Dewey Tomko (a former kindergarten teacher and still a top professional player) in a heads-up battle to win the title.

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