The World Series of Poker was a very different beast back in 1998. It was a year on from Stu Ungar’s al fresco victory at Binions where the gin rummy king would win his third and final WSOP Main Event title. Just a few months after Scotty Nguyen won the 1998 version, Ungar would be found dead in his motel room, virtually penniless.

There are, therefore, few more poignant moments in history than the summer of 1998, which, as it turned out, would be a red-letter day in the lives of not one poker player but two. The Main Event was an odd one all ends up. When Ungar had taken the title in 1997, he had beaten 311 opponents along the way. Scotty Nguyen topped an even higher field of 350 players in 1998 and for the first time in Main Event history, only five players reached the final table. Those were: Kevin McBride, T.J. Cloutier, Dewey Weum and Lee Salem.

Scotty Nguyen was all the personality at an otherwise very stoic table. Cloutier had won multiple bracelets, but he was a member of the old guard. With Huck Seed winning in 1996 and Ungar taking it down in 1997, it needed Nguyen to be victorious in 1998 to continue the line of maverick winners and the growth of the poker phenomenon. It was crucial to an industry that would use the birth of online poker to build the poker playing population and eventually produce the ‘Moneymaker Effect’ of 2003. 

Cue the action. Nguyen dominated the final table, not just with his poker play, but his personality. Going into the final table with the chip lead, Nguyen had 1.18 million chips to McBride (873,000) and Cloutier (829,000) as his closest rivals. Dewey Weum (376,000) and Lee Salem (240,000). Oddly for a final table, everyone finished in the leaderboard order in which they sat down.