Along with Doyle Brunson, the poker world knows another legend and poker pioneer. He is none other than the recently deceased Texan Crandell Addington, a member of the WSOP Hall of Fame, who holds an unparalleled record of an incredible 7 final table appearances at the ME WSOP! Despite the wonderful success he achieved in the early days of poker and the WSOP series, Addington has since 1980 retired and devoted himself full time to his multi-million dollar oil business.

"I haven't played in Vegas in years, I don't even remember when I was there. I don't even go to San Antonio anymore, which has always been the cradle of juicy cash games." He does visit a cash game from time to time, but the last time was during the 2005 WSOP, when he was also inducted into the Hall of Fame. In addition to his accomplishments, many of you may know him for a quote that is well known in the poker world:

Even though he hadn't been active in the game for many years, he had a quantum of memories in his head that he decided to share. "I love to reminisce about the early days of the WSOP and poker in general. In 1969, my close friend Tom Moore invented the Texas Gamblers meeting in Reno, which was a very interesting event. It wasn't a tournament but a cash game for a lot of money, with the best players from all over the circuit. Benny Binion liked this idea the best and wanted to buy it from Tom. I told him to go for it, Benny is a great showman, he will be able to promote it well. Tom gave up on me and decided to give Benny the whole idea".

A year later, the event was officially called the World Series of Poker, but it still wasn't a tournament. It was an all-day cash game session, at the end of which the players chose the best among themselves. Later on, a tournament format was already in place to fairly decide the champion. "The tournament was the main attraction, it was what Benny proudly showed to the media and partners. But for us players the tournament was a joke, you wouldn't believe the money that was being played for in the cash games during those days. Some people, led by mobster Jimmy Chagro, raked in sums you couldn't even imagine!"

While it's public knowledge that the early years of the WSOP were winner-take-all, Crandell revealed some behind-the-scenes info. "Behind closed doors, everybody was making deals. Mostly it was in threes/fours, everyone was better off for a sure check. But all that was offered to the public was the winner-take-all image - it was perfect for the media. Also in 1976, when the winner was Doyle Brunson, who "won" $220,000, in reality, the four players then split 75% of the prizepool and only finished for 25%. But nobody knew that until now."

"The next year it was the same, but the rumors started spreading fast and Benny Binion found out about it. He called us in and told us we had a problem and something had to be done about it. So in 1978, after registration closed, the payout structure was officially announced and the money was given to the top five players. I finished second that year, and Bobby Baldwin became the champion."

What was the key to Crandell's success? "Doyle and I were the only ones with college degrees; we were very into math. Nobody knew what to do properly at the time, but Brian Roberts and I discovered an interesting thing - if you isolate one player before the flop, we calculated that there was a 2.34:1 chance that he would hit at least a pair on the flop. That's when the light bulb went off and we started betting the flop almost every time, regardless of whether we hit anything. Nobody knew about it at the time, and we made a lot of money that way."

The most interesting part of Crandell's whole story is the fact that he was never a tournament player. "I've never played a tournament in my life other than the ME WSOP, even that I only turned on because of Benny. I'm purely a CG player and always will be." Well, the cash player who doesn't consider himself a tournament player by even a shred of personality has the most entries at the final tables of the ME WSOP to his credit.

Sources - Wikipedia, PokerNews, WSOP, CardPlayer