Profiling Past WSOP Champions Part 2

Continuing in our series of articles about past WSOP main event winners we are going to have a look at the careers and information about some of the lesser known winners of the main event tournament from the 1990’s. This was a time before the poker boom, but the tournaments still paid out $1 million to the winner. Some players did not go on to be household names before poker became main stream so here are the profiles and stories of some of the lesser known, but no less skilled champions of that era.

Hamid Reza Dastmalchi is an Iranian-American poker professional who won the tournament in 1992 and $1 million in the process. He was a good player who won three WSOP bracelets in a career spanning over ten years. He is perhaps equally well known for winning a ruling to cash $800,000 worth of chips after a dispute with Becky Binion Behnen after she took over management of the casino from Jack Binion. This landmark ruling saved poker players from potentially have problems cashing chips due to casino management using loopholes to their advantage. Despite his big win he is quite unknown as a former main event winner and does not play the poker circuit anymore. He has cashed in one event of the WPT but remains one of the forgotten main event winners.

James Bechtel become the second amateur player to win the main event at the 1993 WSOP main event, the first since Hal Fowler in 1979. Ironically Bechtel had a runner-up finish in the 1979 WSOP coming close to winning a bracelet that year. Despite being a very active player on the circuit for many years he is not a very well known player. He has main event finishes of 6th in 1988, 31st in 1989 (the year Phil Hellmuth won the tournament) and 23rd in 2001, which in todays world of poker would be an achievement that would gain worldwide poker acclaim. He also managed to come 4th in the 2006 HORSE event winning over $540,000. James continues to play poker at the highest level in the biggest tournaments, despite his relatively low profile compared to other main event champions.

Noel Furlong was the 1999 World Series of Poker champion. Noel is actually a nickname given to him because he was born on Christmas day in 1937. Noel is a very successful businessman owning a carpet distribution business that does business worth $100 million a year. Noel made his money through his business and is therefore a businessperson first and a poker player second. Huck Seed, Erik Siedel and Alan Goehring were beaten by Noel in a final table of the 1999 tournament that tends to get forgotten between Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s win in 2000 and Scotty Nguyens victory in 1998. Furlong remains an active member of the poker community regularly seen in Irish tournaments and World Series of poker events. Until Andy Black came onto the poker scene and had success, Noel was the top Irish player in terms of money won.

It is difficult to say why some players become famous after their big win like Scotty Nguyen, Huck Seed or Dan Harrington whilst others like the players above fade into history. Their accomplishments are still excellent in poker and every player reading this article would love a shot at emulating their achievements at the World Series. It is a testament to their poker that they wished to win for the sake of victory and not to be on the front covers of poker magazines. Hopefully they will continue to do well at future tournaments and carry on playing poker.

By Malcolm Clarke

Popularity: 1% [?]