Johnny Chan: The Orient Express and His Back-to-Back WSOP Wins

I worked the blackjack tables from 1982 to 1998. I saw a lot of players. Some were lucky. Some were skilled. Johnny Chan was both.

Chan did not play blackjack much. He was a poker player. But he had a discipline that blackjack players spent their whole lives trying to learn. He could play fast, make decisions without hesitation, and never display doubt. This is the mindset of a card counter. This is the mindset of a shark.

In 1987, the WSOP Main Event had 152 players. In 1988, it had 167. These are small fields by modern standards, but they were significant for the time. Each year, Chan beat them all.

The Tournament Structure

Back-to-back wins are harder now because the tournament structure has changed. In 1987, the Main Event was a single-day tournament (or maybe two days, the timeline is fuzzy). Chan was able to maintain focus and aggression for the entire time.

Modern tournaments stretch across weeks. The variance is higher. You need luck, skill, and endurance.

Chan had all three.

The Dominance

Chan did not just win in 1987 and 1988. He dominated. His chip stack was often in the top three. He made deep runs. He was not getting lucky. He was playing better poker.

What made him different? He played tight early (folding mediocre hands) and then loosened up as the tournament progressed and the field thinned. This is textbook sound strategy, but it requires discipline. Most players do not have it.

Chan also did not fear larger stacks. A typical strategy is to avoid confrontation with the chip leader. Chan would play pots against big stacks because he trusted his skill.

The Nickname: The Orient Express

Chan earned this nickname for two things: his speed and his nationality. "Orient Express" is a play on the famous train. Chan was fast (the Express part) and Asian (the Orient part, though the nickname is somewhat dated in its terminology).

The speed was real. Chan did not agonize over decisions. He played fast poker. This had a psychological effect on opponents. Fast players seem confident. Confident players are harder to read.

Why No One Repeated

Since Chan, dozens of players have won the Main Event. A handful have won it more than once. But no one has won back-to-back.

This is partly luck. The tournament is large (7,000+ players in recent years). The variance is enormous. Even the best player only has a small edge.

But it is also partly the structure and the competition. In 1987, poker was not professionalized. The competition was softer. There were more recreational players who would make bad decisions.

By the 1990s, poker was more professional. The competition got tougher. Back-to-back wins became nearly impossible.

The Legacy

Chan is remembered as one of the best tournament players of his generation. His back-to-back wins are a monument to his skill in that era. Whether he would repeat the feat in a modern tournament is debatable. Probably not. But in his era, he was dominant.