The World Series Determines the Champions of both Baseball and Poker

Baseball's regular season is rolling to a close and teams such as the Yankees, Tigers, and Reds are all making tweaks to try and make a run at the World Series. Baseball's World Series has crowned baseball's world champion for over 100 years. However, Baseball is not the only game that crowns their champion at the World Series. As you can see here, poker has their own World Series, also known as the World Series of Poker.

The World Series of Poker was founded in 1970 by Jack Binion, the owner of Binion's Horseshoe. He wanted to crown the best poker player in the world. That year, the champion was crowned by popular vote and every year since then, the World Champion has been crowned as the result of a poker tournament.

However, additional "championship" events were added to the World Series of Poker that award bracelets to their winners. As such, each winner is considered a world champion in whichever event they won. However, the recognized World Champion of Poker is the winner of the WSOP Main Event, a poker tournament with a $10,000 buy-in and with several thousand players each year.

Baseball's World Series runs on a similar concept. In the early days of the game, teams in the American League battled for the AL pennant and the teams in the NL battled for the NL pennant. These are the equivalent of poker's bracelet in many WSOP events. The two pennant winners then battled at the World Series to determine the ultimate winner.

Division play changed this to where the winner of each division is considered a champion of their division, followed by a playoff to determine the AL and NL champion. They then get together to battle at the World Series to determine the true World Champion of baseball.

Whether it is baseball or poker, the World Series is the showcase of the top talent in both the games of baseball and poker and those that perform well at the World Series go on to become legends in their respective game. Of course, most kids don't grow up dreaming of winning poker's World Series but instead dream of hitting a homer in the bottom of the 9th of game seven of baseball's fall classic.