/ Matthew Pitt / 26 May 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Back at the 1988 World Series of Poker the Main Event had been whittled down from 167 entrants until just the final two players remained, Johnny Chan and the then unknown Erik Seidel. Although television coverage of poker tournaments was nothing like the grand scale productions we have become accustomed to today, there is still some footage of the famous final hand if you search on the internet.
The heads-up encounter was the grand master taking on the rank amateur as Chan had already won the Main Event the previous year and this result represented Seidel's first cash in a major tournament. The final hand was immortalised in the Hollywood poker film, Rounders, and saw both players limp into the pot and the dealer put out the Qs-8d-Th flop. Seidel initially checked, Chan bet 40,000 and Seidel check-raised to 90,000. Chan made the call and both players checked the 2s on the turn. The river saw the 6d make an appearance and Seidel quickly moved all in with his Qc7h that had made top pair but was crushed as Chan held Jc-9c and had flopped the nut straight.
Since then both Chan and Seidel have gone onto win another eight WSOP bracelets and both have more than $24,000,000 in combined live tournament winnings, and are true legends of the game. Most online poker players will not have had the opportunity to watch these two Goliath's the first time around but they will be able to watch them play each other in a rematch on June 2 at the 42nd Annual World Series of Poker.
Harrah's Entertainment, the owners of the World Series of Poker brand, announced a couple of months ago that they were going to host three rematches of famous encounters throughout WSOP history. Two had already been decided, those being Phil Hellmuth versus Chan (1989) and Chris Moneymaker versus Sammy Farha (2003) but the third match was to be chosen by a public vote. Over the past couple of months poker fans have been visiting the WSOP's Facebook page and voting on which heads-up match they would like to see brought back to life in modern times. Voters could choose from the Chan versus Seidel match described above, Greg Raymer versus David Williams (2004), Jamie Gold versus Paul Wasicka (2006) and Jonathan Duhamel versus John Racener (2010).
The voting closed on Tuesday night and although the news is yet to appear on the WSOP website, they did announced via their Twitter feed that Seidel versus Chan was the easy winner in the vote. All three matches will take place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino on June 2 starting at 1300 Las Vegas time. Hellmuth versus Chan will be a single match-up, whilst Moneymaker and Farha will play a best of three match that starts with each player having the same number of chips as they did in their first encounter eight years ago. The stacks will then be reversed and if a third match is needed the pair will start with even stacks. The full details of Chan versus Seidel are yet to emerge.
All three matches should be extremely entertaining and I am predicting Chan will beat Hellmuth, Farha will beat Moneymaker 2-0 and Seidel will beat Chan in the final match. Stay tuned to find out if I am correct or horribly wrong!
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