ESPN blows its last "fact" in a major way

The last time I wrote about ESPN's "Poker Fact" series, I thought it might be the final one of the year, but they surprised me by adding one more last night during the broadcast of the final table. They sure went out in style, screwing up the last fact about as badly as imaginable.

The claim: “An Ace has been dealt on the winning hand of the Main Event 7 times.”

I have two main sources to check: The Championship Table at the World Series of Poker by Dana Smith, Tom McEvoy, and Ralph Wheeler (2nd edition, 2004), and All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback (2005). I used YouTube videos for the last few years not covered in these two books. I used the first book as the primary source, and only consulted the second where the first is lacking complete information. This is potentially problematic, because I have previously found that Smith/McEvoy/Wheeler have not been entirely accurate in their hand histories. But it's the best I can do, given limited time to research the matter.

There are two years for which the information is incomplete or in dispute. I'll put those aside for the moment. For the other years, here are the number of aces dealt to the players and to the board, written as players/board:

1972: 0/0

1973: 1/0

1976: 1/1

1977: 0/0

1978: 0/1

1979: 2 (pocket aces)/0

1980: 1/1

1981: 1/0

1982: 2 (1 each)/0

1983: 0/0

1984: 0/0

1985: 1/0

1986: 2 (1 each)/0

1987: 1/0

1988: 0/0

1989: 1/0

1990: 0/0

1991: 0/0

1992: 0/0

1993: 0/0

1994: 0/0

1995: 1/0

1996: 0/1

1997: 2 (1 each)/1

1998: 0/0

1999: 0/0

2000: 2 (1 each)/0

2001: 2 (pocket aces)/0

2002: 0/0

2003: 0/0

2004: 1/0

2005: 1/1

2006: 0/1

2007: 1/0

Just as a fun side fact, it should be noted that both times a player was dealt pocket aces, he lost both the hand and the championship! In 1979, Hal Fowler cracked Bobby Hoff's aces with 6-7 offsuit, and in 2001 Carlos Mortensen cracked Dewey Tomko's aces with suited K-Q. Obviously, if you're heads up for the WSOP Main Event bracelet and get dealt pocket aces, you should just fold.

So the number of years in which at least one ace was dealt face down to at least one player is 17. The number of years in which at least one ace was placed on the board is 7. The number of years in which one or both of those things happened is 20.

This data is complicated by the years for which the information is muddled. For 1974 we apparently have no record of what the final hand was. For 1975, my two sources are utterly discordant. Smith/McEvoy/Wheeler say that the hole cards were 9s/9c and Ac-Kd. They say that "The board cards for the last hand are unknown." Grotenstein and Reback say that the hole cards were pocket jacks (suits unspecified) and Jc-9c, with a final board of 7h-6c-2c-9s-10h. Neither book tells us the source(s) of the information. As you can see, if the first is correct, it makes 8 years in which an ace fell on the board. If the second book is correct, it does not change the numbers given above. I have no way to resolve the discrepancy.

I have to address the wording of ESPN's "fact." An ace being "dealt" is ambiguous. It could mean either dealt to a player as a down card or "dealt" onto the board as a community card, or both. It's just not clear exactly what the assertion is here. It is further ambiguous in what is meant by "7 times." That could mean that the event in question happened in 7 different years, or that over the years, a total of 7 aces have been dealt. I'm going to assume they meant the former.

But even with that assumption, the only way the "fact" is correct is if "dealt" means "put on the board and not given to a player," and if Grotenstein/Reback are right about the disputed 1975 final hand not containing an ace anywhere. But that's perhaps the least natural reading of the word "dealt." Why would it mean a community card but not a hole card? That just doesn't make sense.

During the 2008 WSOP broadcasts, ESPN gave us a total of 13 "poker facts." I scored 8 of them as wrong, 5 right--not a particularly impressive record of accuracy.

Sorry, ESPN, but you blew your last chance to redeem your reputation as a reliable source of poker facts.


Addendum

Within minutes after putting up this post, reader "NerveEnding" submitted a comment (see below) that makes me re-think the whole thing. I had just taken the phrase "winning hand" to be the equivalent of "final hand," but Nerve suggests that it means that the champion held an ace in 7 different years. Looking back on it, I think this interpretation didn't occur to me because of the strange phrasing "dealt on the winning hand," whereas if Nerve is right, it would be more natural to say something like "the winning hand has contained an ace."

But as I think about it, I'm convinced that Nerve has it right, in terms of ESPN's probable intended meaning. So I had to go back and check. As I mentioned before, in both of the years in which a player had pocket aces, he lost (1979 and 2001). There were four years in which each player had an ace in the hole (1982, 1986, 1997, and 2000), so obviously the winner had an ace. (Incidentally, the better kicker held up two times--1982 and 1986--and the lesser one sucked out the other two times.) There were 11 years in which just one player had an ace (1973, 1976, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1995, 2004, 2005, and 2007). Of those, the ace turned out to be the winning hand in three (1973, 1981, and 1987). So if you combine the four years in which both players had an ace with those three, you get seven, as ESPN reported.

This is not muddled by the possibility of the disputed 1975 hand, because even if Smith et al are correct about its details, the A-K was the losing hand.

So despite the title I already affixed to this post (I could change it, but I think it's more honest to keep it as originally written, with this corrective note), I guess I'll have to retract my conclusion and say that ESPN got this one right, though they deserve some chiding for stating their "fact" in such an ambiguous manner.

That means I also need to revise my final season score for ESPN to 6 right, 7 wrong--marginally better than before.