Check out databases of tournament results for Tom McEvoy, and a list as long as your arm comes up, including four of those shiny WSOP bracelets. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he is a writer, student and teacher of the game, and has, perhaps unsurprisingly, lodged in Las Vegas where his unprecedented number of World Series finishes took place.
Trained as an accountant, he showed the world, before it was trendy to do so, how one goes about giving up a corporate career to go pro. Getting fired from his job just opened another, totally different door for the soft-spoken part-time player. His visits to Nevada became one permanent visit after 1978, and it became apparent that he’d made the right move when, after taking up the growing game of Texas hold’em, in 1983 he won both the $1,000 Limit Hold’em event, and the $10,000 Main Event. Not that he was doing too shabbily beforehand; he came to the big games with the experience of many smaller ones under his belt, admitting that before packing in the regular job he was often making more cash from small games which I am sure were glad to see the back of him.
The most interesting thing about his ’83 Main Event win was the fact that he was the first player to win it off the back of a satellite. Now you can’t turn on the TV without seeing someone at a final table who qualified for $10 on their favourite site, but before the internet boom this was quite an achievement. Not that he’s been left behind by technology – far from it. He plays against virtual opponents more than real ones these days and appears as at home multitabling at home as playing the big money players face to face. He has an affiliation deal with satellite-runners extraordinaire PokerStars.com, and has the interesting job of playing their tournament leaderboard leader heads-up for $1000 every week. Considering the standard of play online has risen, with many other pros having spotted the lucrative world of high-speed online play, I am sure this serves to keep his claws sharp for the live tournaments he plays whenever possible.
One such live tournament was this March’s PPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars of Poker, which he won, taking home $225,000 to add to his roughly $2 million in tournament prizes. He seems continually interested in sharing with his would-be opponents out there his knowledge of tournament and cash strategies, and many new players will know his name mainly from the array of books he has authored and co-authored on the subject. Probably the most prolific poker writer around, with each new development in poker comes a new essay to be written. Online play looks to be getting the McEvoy treatment, and in general he seems to enjoy tutoring the less experienced out there. And with cashes in the games of limit hold’em and Omaha, Omaha hi-lo, S.H.O.E, pot limit and of course no-limit hold’em, Seven-card stud and Razz, it looks like he has a lot of fields of expertise.
His published books include:
Championship Tournament Poker Championship No Limit and Pot Limit Hold’em (with TJ Cloutier) Championship Omaha (with TJ Cloutier) Championship Omaha: Omaha High-Low, Omaha High and Pot-Limit Omaha (with TJ Cloutier) How To Win At Poker Tournaments Championship Satellite Strategy (with Brad Daugherty) How To Win No-Limit Hold’em Tournaments (with Don Vines) No-Limit Texas Hold’em – The New Players Guide to Winning Poker’s Biggest Game (with Brad Daugherty) Championship Tournament Practise Hands
