The World Series of Poker in the '80s

The World Series of Poker* experienced consistent growth in the 80's mostly due to the introduction of the "satellite". A satellite gave a poker players the opportunity to gain entry to the Main Event by means of winning a "feeder" tournament that had a considerably smaller buy-in. The most common format would be ten players each buying in for $1,000, winner take all, thus covering the WSOP main event buy-in. Not only did the main event grow, so did the number of preliminary events and the entrants to those. By the end of the decade the number of total entrants had grown to over 2,000. Despite the number of amateurs that were flocking to these events due to the sattelites, pros dominated the final tables. Stu "the Kid" Ungar and Johnny Chan would both win back to back titles. Chan nearly won three in a row, making it heads up against Phil Helmuth in the 1989 World Series of Poker before finally bowing out.

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