How Eric Drache Transformed Modern Poker Tournaments
Eric Drache may not be one of the most well-known names in the poker world, but as you will learn, he’s helped make many poker players the most popular worldwide. His contributions to poker are largely responsible for making the game successful today. Drache has been both on top of the mountain and on the bottom looking up, but what he has done for the game cannot be denied.
Eric Drache first stepped into the poker scene in 1973 when he became the tournament director for the World Series of Poker (WSOP). In this day and age, the job would be considered one of the best in poker. Still, many professional poker players scoffed at the idea during this time, wondering why the tournament needed a director. After all, in the previous year, the Main Event only had eight entrants, and the entire series had only one other event, a five-card stud. Drache immediately made his presence felt. In his first year, he added four events to the series, and the number of entrants jumped to 13! However, Drache was just getting started.
By 1978 the Main Event entrants had jumped to 42, and it now had 11 total events, yet Drache still felt like something was missing. A day or two before starting the 1978 WSOP main event, Drache was walking around the poker room when he noticed a full-ring cash game. He noticed that each player had at least 1,000 dollars on them. Drache has an idea that would change the game of poker forever. He went to the table and told them they should all leave just $1,000 on the table and play winner takes. The winner would have the $10,000 entry buy-in to the main event. This, of course, was the birth of the satellite tournament. The tournament has allowed the likes of Chris Moneymaker to turn 40 dollars into 2.5 million dollars and countless others the chance to play in games they otherwise couldn’t afford.
The birth of the satellite changed tournament poker forever. Since the introduction of satellites officially in 1979, the WSOP main event grew yearly, except in 1991 and 2006, when it peaked at 8,773 participants.
Drache’s other contributions to tournament poker made the game a more enjoyable experience for everyone. In the early 70s, many tournaments seemed to “wing it,” not knowing when they were raising their blinds or if they should do antes, things that aren’t second-guessed today because they mostly run smoothly. Drache introduced ante structures and pressed for unified rules in all poker tournaments in Vegas, which took longer to accomplish but has since become the norm for casinos everywhere. Drache also was the first to train dealers. In those days, poker dealers usually came from other games in the casino and often could not keep up or answer simple questions about the game because they didn’t know the answers. Drache saw to it that the dealers became properly trained and were able to deal with simple to moderate issues that arrived at the table during a tournament. Once again, a small change went a long way.
Drache would then take over as tournament director for the Golden Nugget before being recruited by Steve Wynn, who was opening “The Mirage” – the biggest hotel on the strip. Nowadays, poker is popular in many hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, but back then, poker was hardly available there. Wynn entrusted Drache with nearly every aspect of the poker room, including where to put it in the casino and to recruit players to the game. The poker room was a smash hit and introduced poker to a brand new crowd of people, the people who only stayed on the strip when visiting Las Vegas.
Unfortunately, Drache ran into some legal troubles in the early 80’s. The IRS prosecuted Drache for failing to pay taxes and, as a result, lost his gaming license. Drache stepped away from the game he loved for over a decade and moved to Los Angeles. There he got married, had two kids, and was content, but that’s when poker came calling back. Larry Flint, owner of the Hustler Casino not too far from where Drache lived then, had just opened a poker room and asked him to help. As he did at The Mirage, he situated the poker room where he thought best and brought in many high-stakes players to check out the new casino. Despite being out of the limelight for a decade, many of his old Vegas friends were happy to see him.
Since then, Drache has had his hand in several projects. Most notable have been NBC’s “National Heads-Up Challenge” and Game Show Network’s “High Stakes Poker.” This past November, he returned to the WSOP, this time as a producer for the Pay-Per-View coverage of the main event’s final table.
Drache is largely responsible for helping the game grow from a few men sitting around a table in the first few years of the WSOP to millions of people playing poker daily in casinos and online. He helped branch poker from downtown Las Vegas, seen as a “seedy” game, to put it in the middle of the strip for everyone to see. Plus, the early rules he put in place as a tournament director continue to be used today. Not many people can say they changed an aspect of poker, and Drache changed many things, all positively – particularly as the inventor of the satellite tournament format. Drache was an easy pick to be inducted into the Pokerology.com Hall of Fame.
