Going into the final table of the WSOP Main Event, John Bonetti was an overwhelming favorite. He had a huge chip lead with almost half the chips in play (with six players left), had already won his second bracelet earlier in the Series and was seen by most as the best player at the table.
A hardened New Yorker who’d only invested himself in poker after proving successful in business pursuits, Bonetti was a talkative, perma-table captain who seemed out of his element under the final table lights. He started aggressive out of the blocks, could only watch as his lead slipped away to farmer Jim Bechtel and then finally, after mounting a comeback, threw away his chances of taking the title and a lot more money with one poorly thought out hand.
With three players left—Bonetti, Bechtel and dentist Glenn Cozen—Bonetti was all but assured of at least second place. Cozen was down to $60K with the blinds $5K-$10K when Bechtel raised to $30K on the preflop. When raising first in, it’s standard to multiply the blinds by 2.5-3 times.
Cozen called with a to-this-day unidentified pocket pair, a curious choice in that conventional wisdom says going all in is the play. Playing with so few chips, Cozen had already given up on any hopes for the championship he’d entertained, switching into survivor mode early on and playing very conservatively. ‘The mistake’ ended up making Cozen $210K, or twice what he’d have made were he blinded out. Bonetti called with Ako, choosing to see the flop instead of paring the field down with a bet.
"The flop came K-6-X" Cozen would recount. Bonetti, holding top pair with top kicker, started the betting, but Bechtel played back at him with his three sixes. Bonetti should have smelled a rat when Bechtel played the hand as strong as he did. Cozen folded rather than play his stack at 6-1 odds, and Bonetti made what esteemed poker historian Mike Paulle (who, granted, is not a Bonetti fan) refers to as the worst play in poker history, putting his stack in the center and finishing third for his troubles.
Now, calling this the worst play in poker history is a stretch, but this is certainly one of the big blunders to occur on the WSOP stage. Bonetti would go on to win another bracelet in 1995 and make a final table this year at age seventy-five. Bechtel’s eventual victory has become a near-footnote to Bonetti’s blunder. He had to settle with the win.e with the win.
