2006 WSOP Main Event: Jamie Gold’s $12 Million Run

In the early hours of August 11, 2006, Jamie Gold won the World Series of Poker Main Event and $12 million, the largest prize ever awarded in a live poker tournament up to that point. The 36-year-old television producer from Malibu, California, had outlasted 8,772 other entrants in a record field of 8,773, then closed the final table by beating Paul Wasicka heads-up. The WSOP’s own history page describes it as the culmination of the record attendance that followed the poker boom. This story draws on the WSOP’s official results, the Associated Press and contemporary poker media, and it flags the points where those accounts differ. It covers how the field grew, how Gold took control, what followed and what the numbers say about everyone who did not win.

How the Boom Built a Record Field

The 2006 field makes sense only against what came before. The WSOP’s own history credits Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 win, which began with an $86 online satellite, with inspiring people around the world to take up the game and triggering the poker boom of the early 2000s. That 2003 final is retold in the hand that sparked the poker boom. The WSOP says the 2004 Main Event tripled the record turnout of the year before, and a 2006 WSOP announcement notes that the previous participation record for a live poker event, 5,619 players in 2005, was set at the Main Event a year earlier.

In 2006 the Main Event ran at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas as the culmination of a 46-event series. The WSOP’s official report lists 8,773 entries for the $10,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em World Championship and total prize money of $82,512,162. Contemporary reports round the pool to $82.5 million, and one Las Vegas newspaper printed $82.6 million, so the exact rounding differs while the official figure is not in doubt. According to the WSOP’s own tournament page, 874 players finished in the money, which is roughly one entrant in ten.

The eventual champion was not a career tournament pro. The Associated Press described Gold as a talkative former Hollywood talent agent whose clients had included Jimmy Fallon and Lucy Liu, and the WSOP described him as a television producer. AP also identified poker legend Johnny Chan as his mentor. Chan’s own best-known final hand is covered in Chan’s 1988 final-hand story.

Gold’s Run to the Title

The Chip Lead

The WSOP says Gold became the chip leader on Day 3 of the Main Event and never gave up the lead. Other contemporary coverage dates his lead from Day 4, so accounts differ by a day on when he first took control. Card Player described his four straight days as chip leader as unheard of. The tournament began in late July, and the final table was played on August 10.

When nine players sat down for the final table, Gold already held the largest stack with 26,650,000 in chips, followed by Allen Cunningham with 17,770,000 and Richard Lee with 11,820,000, according to Card Player. Paul Wasicka, a 25-year-old former restaurant manager from Westminster, Colorado, started fifth with 7,970,000. The AP reports that all nine were guaranteed at least $1.5 million and that play began around 2 p.m. and lasted about 13 hours.

A Table Taken Apart

The AP’s account says Gold knocked out seven of his eight opponents: Dan Nassif in ninth, Erik Friberg in eighth, Richard Lee in sixth, Rhett Butler in fifth, Allen Cunningham in fourth, Michael Binger in third and finally Wasicka. Only Doug Kim, in seventh, lost to someone else, when Wasicka’s pocket queens beat his pocket nines. Chan, quoted by the AP, said: “He single-handedly knocked out seven out of eight players.”

The knockouts came in different ways. According to the AP, Gold had pocket queens when Friberg moved all in with pocket jacks, and an unsuited two and three was enough to take a pot of about 3 million from Wasicka and Lee when both folded to a bluff. Gold told the AP afterward: “I was just lucky sometimes, and sometimes I outplayed people.”

The Three-Handed Fold

The hand that poker media remembered most came with three players left. PokerNews reconstructed it from the final-table record: Gold held 4♠ 3♣, Wasicka 8♠ 7♠ and Binger A♥ 10♥, with blinds of 200,000 and 400,000 and a 50,000 ante. The flop was 6♠ 10♣ 5♠, giving Wasicka a straight-flush draw, Gold a straight draw and Binger top pair. After Binger bet 3.5 million, Gold moved all in, Wasicka folded after about a minute, and Binger called. The 7♣ on the turn gave Gold a straight, and the Q♠ on the river was a spade that would have completed the flush Wasicka had been drawing to, which PokerNews says added a layer of second-guessing to his fold. The AP summarizes the same moment differently, saying Gold called an all-in bet with his three and four, so the sources disagree on who put the chips in, although they agree on the cards and the straight.

Heads-Up

According to Card Player, Gold began heads-up play with 78,975,000 chips to Wasicka’s 11,225,000. After about 20 minutes, they got the chips in on a flop of queen, eight and five. Wasicka held pocket tens and Gold held a queen and a nine, according to the AP, which adds that the turn was an ace and the river a four. Gold’s pair of queens beat Wasicka’s pair of tens. Wasicka said afterward: “My gut just told me to go for it, and I just went for it and I was wrong.”

The table below collects the top finishers and prizes from the WSOP’s official results.

Even the ninth-place payout was about $1.57 million, which shows how steeply the prize pool rewarded the final table. Gold’s $12 million was nearly double the runner-up’s $6.1 million.

Why the 2006 Main Event Still Matters

The first reason is scale. The WSOP’s history page calls 2006 the year the Main Event broke records for both its largest field and its largest first-place prize, and the WSOP release describes the $82.5 million pool as the largest for any sporting event in history, a claim worth reading as the organizers’ own framing. The tournament showed how far the Moneymaker effect had traveled in just three years.

The second reason is that it fixed an image of the poker boom in public memory. Gold’s table talk and constant reraises, which the AP described as his trademark flourish, were part of how the final was covered. Gold’s personality was central to the coverage as well as the cards. For a sense of how the structure behind such a tournament works, see what a day at the Main Event is really like.

The third reason is the record itself. The PokerNews retrospective in 2015 still called Gold’s $12 million the largest Main Event cash ever. That statement is dated: records in poker are broken as fields grow, and readers should check the WSOP’s current record list before treating any figure as the all-time mark.

The Other Side of the $12 Million

For every winner there were thousands who paid $10,000 and went home with nothing. Only 874 of the 8,773 entrants cashed, so roughly nine in ten lost their entire buy-in. A single winner at the top of a record field says little about the typical result.

The win was also followed by a legal dispute. In August 2006, Los Angeles television producer Bruce Crispin Leyser sued Gold in Clark County District Court, claiming Gold had promised to split any winnings in exchange for help finding celebrities to wear a sponsor’s logo. The Las Vegas Sun reported that a judge signed a temporary restraining order preventing Gold from collecting his winnings from the Rio. These were Leyser’s allegations in the complaint, and Gold’s side was not established in court. Card Player reported in February 2007 that the parties settled without litigation, with a joint statement saying that Gold had always intended to share his winnings. The amount Leyser received was not disclosed, and the AP reported that Gold had already withdrawn $6 million, with the remainder frozen by court order.

The dispute is not a verdict on how Gold played, which the WSOP’s official results record. It does show how informal side deals can turn a win into a lawsuit, a risk that big prizes make larger.

Myths About the 2006 Main Event

Myth: Gold’s win came from luck alone. He told the AP that sometimes he was lucky and sometimes he outplayed people, and the AP described bluffs and well-timed calls alongside favorable cards. Variance plays a part in every tournament, and the sources do not support a single-cause explanation.

Myth: the $12 million is still the biggest Main Event prize. It was the largest prize in live poker when it was awarded, and PokerNews still called it the largest Main Event cash in 2015. Records change as fields grow, so check the WSOP’s current list.

Myth: Gold got the whole prize at once. The AP reported that he withdrew half of it, with the rest frozen by a court order after the lawsuit. The dispute was later settled.

What to Read Next

To see the beginning of the boom, read The Moneymaker Bluff. To understand the Main Event itself, what a day at the Main Event is really like covers the structure. Anyone curious about Gold’s mentor can start with Chan and Seidel in 1988.

Sources & References

• ESPN (Associated Press) — Gold rush: Bluff nets Gold $12 million WSOP win
• WSOP.com — Gold Strike! Television Producer Jamie Gold Wins $12 Million At World Series of Poker Main Event
• WSOP.com — World Series of Poker Main Event Winner to Receive $12 Million
• WSOP.com — WSOP History
• WSOP.com — 2006 WSOP Event #39 Results
• WSOP.com — 2006 World Series of Poker Official Results
• The Hendon Mob — 2006 WSOP $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold’em World Championship Event
• Card Player — Jamie Gold Wins The 2006 WSOP Main Event
• PokerNews — Hand Histories: Gold-Wasicka-Binger, Three-Handed at the 2006 WSOP Main Event Final Table
• Las Vegas Sun — All that glitter is not Gold’s, says lawsuit seeking half of poker win
• Card Player — Jamie Gold and Crispin Leyser Settle WSOP Lawsuit