Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When did the World Series of Poker start?
The idea of a World Series of Poker began in 1969 with an event called the Texas Gambling Reunion. It was an invitational event sponsored by Tom Moore of San Antonio, Texas, and held at the Holiday Hotel and Casino in Reno. This inaugural event was won by Crandell Addington. The set of tournaments that the World Series of Poker (WSOP) would evolve into was the brainchild of Las Vegas casino owner and poker player Benny Binion. In 1970, the first WSOP at Binion's Horseshoe took place as a series of cash games that included five-card stud, deuce to seven low-ball draw, razz, seven-card stud, and Texas hold 'em. The format for the Main Event as a freeze-out Texas hold 'em game came the next year. The winner in 1970, Johnny Moss, was elected by his peers as the first "World Champion of Poker" and received a silver cup as a prize.
In October 2011 World Series of Backgammon announced a partnership with the largest online gaming operator in the world, Bwin.com, for online backgammon creating bwin.com/wsob to provide an online tour with a lower buy-in to attract all levels of players. The new tour mimics the major live tournaments run by WSOB and includes a series of events, a points race and the WSOB Championship. The WSOB Champion wins the coveted Gold Cube® and an official backgammon board made by Geoffrey Parker Games and worth apparently €2400.
This was the first World Series played entirely on artificial turf. This was also the first World Series since 1920, and the last to date, in which neither team had won a World Series before. With their victory, the Phillies became the final team out of the original sixteen MLB teams to win a World Series. However, a Philadelphia team had won a World Series before, the last being the Philadelphia Athletics in , exactly a half-century before this Series; in a twist of fate, the Athletics would play thirteen years in Kansas City before eventually settling in Oakland.
World Series of Backgammon (WSOB) is a major televised live tour. The television shows capture the match action, jeopardy and background around some of the world’s largest backgammon tournaments, and have broadcast throughout Europe on Eurosport 1 and 2 whilst being distributed worldwide by ESPN International.
Blizzard's MMO "World of Warcraft" added PvP features to the game after its release, and was received enthusiastically as an eSport. The game was generally phased out of MLG between 2010 and 2011, but Blizzard continues to hold the World of Warcraft Arena Global Invitational annually. The prize pool for the 2013 World of Warcraft Arena Global Invitational totaled over $180,000 and that of the 2014 World of Warcraft Arena Invitational World Championship totaled $250,000.
From 1959 to 1972, the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance (JWA), run by Rikidōzan, held a tournament called World League (also known as the "World Big League"), which featured both Japanese and foreign professional wrestlers. Rikidōzan himself dominated the annual tournament early on, however, after his death in 1963, the tournament was won six times by Giant Baba and once by Antonio Inoki. JWA folded shortly after both Baba and Inoki left the promotion to create All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), respectively. Both men took the concept of World League with them to their new promotions, with Baba creating the "Champion Carnival" in 1973 and Inoki creating the World League in 1974, later renaming it G1 Climax.
The 2004 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 2004 season. The 100th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff between the American League (AL) champion Boston Red Sox and the National League (NL) champion St. Louis Cardinals; the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in four games. The series was played from October 23 to 27, 2004, at Fenway Park and Busch Memorial Stadium, broadcast on Fox, and watched by an average of just under 25.5 million viewers. The Red Sox's World Series championship was their first since 1918.
Founded in 1985, Pinball Expo is the longest-running event dedicated to pinball. It was conceived in 1984 by Robert "Rob" Berk of Warren, Ohio, with the purpose of honoring his heroes of the pinball industry; the artists and designers. With the assistance of Bill Kurtz of Cleveland, Ohio, and later Mike Pacak of Canfield, Ohio, the trio held their first event over the weekend of November 22–24, 1985 at the Holiday Inn O'Hare/Kennedy in Rosemont, Illinois. The inaugural event attracted around 100 attendees from all parts of the world and a dozen vendors. The expo offers seminars, a tour of a pinball factory, an autograph session, tournaments, an exhibit hall of pinball machines, parts, and related paraphernalia, and much more. On October 26, 1991, the Pinball Expo launched the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame and inducted its first class of pinball luminaries: David Gottlieb, Ray Moloney, Sam Stern, and Harry E. Williams. The event is open to the general public.
The popularity of backgammon surged in the mid-1960s, in part due to the charisma of Prince Alexis Obolensky who became known as "The Father of Modern Backgammon". "Obe", as he was called by friends, co-founded the International Backgammon Association, which published a set of official rules. He also established the World Backgammon Club of Manhattan, devised a backgammon tournament system in 1963, then organized the first major international backgammon tournament in March, 1964, which attracted royalty, celebrities and the press. The game became a huge fad and was played on college campuses, in discothèques and at country clubs; stockbrokers and bankers began playing at conservative men's clubs. People young and old all across the country dusted off their boards and checkers. Cigarette, liquor and car companies began to sponsor tournaments and Hugh Hefner held backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion. Backgammon clubs were formed and tournaments were held, resulting in a World Championship promoted in Las Vegas in 1967.
The 2012 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 2012 season. The 108th edition of the World Series, the series was a best-of-seven playoff between the National League (NL) champion San Francisco Giants and the American League (AL) champion Detroit Tigers; the Giants won in a four-game sweep. This marked the Giants' seventh World Series title in franchise history, their second in San Francisco (they won five in New York), and their second in a three-year period (2010–2012). Their World Series sweep was the first by an NL team since the Cincinnati Reds swept the Oakland Athletics in the 1990 series and the first NL sweep not by the Reds since 1963, when the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the New York Yankees. This was also the first World Series since 1988 to feature both of that year's League MVPs. The Giants' Pablo Sandoval, who in Game 1 tied a record by hitting three home runs in one World Series game, two off Tigers' ace pitcher Justin Verlander, was named the World Series Most Valuable Player (MVP).
Season II, 2008, expanded to events in London - the UK Masters saw a 128 draw in the main event, the largest backgammon event held in the UK for 30 years; the world's largest event, the Nordic Open joined the WSOB tour for the first time and saw the Championship field increase from 78 to 153 players and finally on the 08 tour, WSOB Cannes, which recorded 155 Championship players, second only to the World Championships. The television series expanded to 15 hours and saw superstar poker and backgammon player Gus Hansen join John Clark in the commentary box. New Yorker Jessie Cantrell hosted with further contributions from experts Sander Lylloff, Falafel Natanzon and Morten Holm.
The Sunday night contest was the first weekend World Series game to start after dark. MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn responded to criticism of the scheduling, which was done to accommodate NBC television, by attending the game without wearing an overcoat in spite of the cold nighttime weather.
The World Wrestling Council (WWC) is a professional wrestling promotion based in Puerto Rico. It was originally established as Capitol Sports Promotions in 1973 by Carlos Colón Sr., Victor Jovica, and Gorilla Monsoon. It was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance until 1988. By the mid-1990s, the promotion had changed its name to the World Wrestling Council.
Presided by Richard Negrin, produced by Hugo Savinovich and Danny Nieves Gerena as their Director of talents relations the World Wrestling League was founded in late 2012 and began its media exposition, with Josian Omed Vázquez Díaz as promotion's press manager, on January 21, 2013. The promotion was officially launched in a press conference held at the Water Club hotel in San Juan. In this event, WWL announced the signing of several high-profile Puerto Rican wrestlers, including former champions of the International Wrestling Association and World Wrestling Council Eric Pérez, Roberto Rubio and José "Monster Pain" Torres. The company also presented its business plan, noting that it intended to have an international scope instead of directly competing with other promotions in Puerto Rico. A series of alliances were made with several international promotions including Wrestling Alliance Revolution (WAR) in Ecuador, Leader Wrestling Assotiation (LWE) in Peru, Dominican Wrestling Entertainment (DWE) in the Dominican Republic and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in the United States. During the following months, the promotion focused on creating its final roster and production team, which saw the exclusion of Víctor Siebens, owner of the Puerto Rico Wrestling Association, who had served as producer during the first months and the inclusion of Danny Nieves Gerena who was the promoter of NWA Chicago to fill the role. In February, two of the IWA's and WWC's main producers in the past, Héctor Moyano, Sr. and his eponymous son joined to work on the production of the television show, "Campeones del Ring", which was launched on Tele Isla and CW Puerto Rico the following week. Axel Cruz was contracted to serve as the promotions main announcer along Moyano, with Joe Don Smith and Harold Santy serving as counterparts for the English announce table. However, the announcing staff was changed due to the death of Moyano due to illness, with José Laureano joining it before his demise. In mid-February the WWL announced the inclusion of then NWA World Champion Kahagas and WXW World Champion Joe "Hercules" Gómez to the roster of its first show. This was followed by alliances with Lucha Libre AAA World Wide (AAA) in Mexico and Pro Wrestling Revolution (PWR) in California, with both of these companies agreeing for their champions to expose the titles outside of their territories. On February 16, the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum was selected to host WWL's first show, "Idols of Wrestling".
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
The series was announced on 10 July 2009, under the working title of "Digital Revolution", to examine the impact the World Wide Web has had on society over its first 20 years. Technology journalist and academic Aleks Krotoski would present. The series was launched with an event at the BBC to mark the twentieth anniversary of the World Wide Web, which saw Tim Berners-Lee (credited with inventing the World Wide Web), Susan Greenfield, Bill Thompson and Chris Anderson discuss the World Wide Web.
The World Backgammon Association (WBA) has been holding the biggest backgammon Tour of the circuit since 2007, the "European Backgammon Tour" (EBGT). In 2011, the WBA collaborated with the online backgammon provider Play65 for the 2011 season of the European Backgammon Tour and with "Betfair" in 2012. The 2013 season of the European Backgammon Tour featured 11 stops and 19 qualified players competing for 19,000 € in a Grand Finale in Lefkosa, Northern Cyprus. WBA also staged the "US Open" and other events around the globe. WBA has contributed to a high-stakes event called "Crowns Cup" broadcast on several TV-channels.
The World Chess Championship (sometimes abbreviated as WCC) is played to determine the world champion in chess. Since 2014, the schedule has settled on a two-year cycle with a championship held in every even year. Magnus Carlsen has been world champion since he dethroned Viswanathan Anand in 2013. He then went on to successfully defend his title against Anand in 2014, against Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018.
The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships, commonly known as Majors, are (CS:GO) esports tournaments sponsored by Valve Corporation, the game's developer. The Majors were first introduced in 2013 and took place in Jönköping, Sweden and was hosted by DreamHack with a total prize pool of 250,000. Six teams were directly invited, six teams were invited based on previous tournament results, and another four teams came from direct qualifiers.
Since the release of "Warcraft", "Diablo", and "StarCraft" (1998), Blizzard has focused almost exclusively on the "Warcraft", "Diablo", and "StarCraft" series. The sole exception has been the company's latest title, "Overwatch" (2016). All of Blizzard's games released since 2004 still receive expansions and updates, especially the long-running massively multiplayer online role-playing game "World of Warcraft" (2004). With over 100 million lifetime accounts as of 2014 and US$9 billion in revenue as of 2017, "World of Warcraft" is one of the best-selling computer games and highest-grossing video games of all time. Blizzard Entertainment has developed 19 games since 1991 as of 2018, in addition to developing 8 ports between 1992 and 1993; 11 of those games are in the "Warcraft", "Diablo", and "StarCraft" series.
World Championship Wrestling Inc. (WCW) is a defunct American professional wrestling promotion, historically based in Atlanta, Georgia. WCW was established in 1988 when Turner Broadcasting System purchased the nearly bankrupt Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP), which had been one of the major territories of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). Turner initially renamed the company the Universal Wrestling Corporation and shortly afterward renamed it again as World Championship Wrestling, after the name of JCP's flagship television show. In its early years, WCW was buoyed by established NWA performers such as Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes, along with emerging stars like Lex Luger, and Sting, who would go on to be dubbed "The Franchise of WCW".
The World Series of Poker (WSOP), held annually in Las Vegas, is "the oldest, largest, most prestigious, and most media-hyped gaming competition in the world". In 2000, the WSOP started to honor Casino Employees by offering a bracelet event that only they could enter. The first tournament was called the "Dealers World Poker Championship" because it was limited to poker dealers. The following year the field was open to all casino employees.
The 2016 World Series of Poker was the 47th annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). Most of the events occurred May 31-July 18 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. There were 69 bracelet events, including the $10,000 No Limit Hold'em Main Event which began on July 9. The Main Event final table was reached on July 18, with the November Nine returning to play from October 30-November 1.Source:
The $10,000 Main Event No Limit Hold'em Championship began on July 9 with the first of three starting flights. The November Nine was reached on July 18, with the final table being contested over three days from October 30-November 1.
The World Poker Tour bracelet is the World Poker Tour's (WPT) answer to the World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet. Beginning in 1976, the WSOP started awarding bracelets to winners of WSOP events. The WSOP bracelet has become synonymous with greatness. "It's impossible to overstate the value of a World Series of Poker gold bracelet to anyone who takes the game seriously," stated World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack during the 2006 bracelet unveiling. "It is the equivalent of winning the Stanley Cup in hockey or the Lombardi Trophy in football." Since their introduction, a poker player's success has been measured by the number of bracelets they had won. With introduction of the WPT bracelet, the WPT hopes to capitalize on the prestige of winning poker bracelets. WPT Founder, President and CEO, Steve Lipscomb said, "The championship bracelet has become synonymous with poker as a symbol of achievement and respect, and we are honored to continue the tradition that Benny Binion [the founder of the WSOP] began over 30 years ago."
Starting with the 2011 WSOP Circuit, the Circuit National Championship was held as a closed event for participants of various circuit events. The first Circuit National Championship was held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The winner of this event received a World Series of Poker bracelet—the first ever to be awarded in an event other than the main Las Vegas World Series of Poker or the World Series of Poker Europe.