Greg Raymer

Has anyone ever won the World Series of Poker main event with pocket aces?

No. Well as far as we know because what Johnny Moss won with was not saved for posterity. But for the 35 winners we do know about, no one has won with pocket rockets.

Has anyone ever lost the WSOP main event with pocket aces?

Yes,in fact it has happened twice.

In 1979, Bobby Hoff had AA and lost to Hal Fowler's 7s6d.
In 2001, Dewey Tomko had AA and lost to Carlos Mortensen with KcQc.

Other notable final hands:

Greg Raymer (2004) and Jerry Yang (2007) both had pocket 8s on the final hand.

In both 1976 and 1977, Doyle Brunson's winning hand was 10-2.

Dan Harrington (1995) and Huck Seed (1996) won back-to-back with 9d8d.

In 1999, Noel Furlong held 55 and Alan Goehring had 66 but the fives won.

Bobby Baldwin (1978) and Tom McEvoy (1983) both won with pocket queens.

Sailor Roberts (1975) and Phil Hellmuth (1989) held 99 on their final hand.

And the worst starting hand to ever win?

Well we know a lot of the "final" hands involve big stacks calling with any two but that being acknowledged-in 1992, Hamid Dastmalchi held 8h4s and won the first prize of a million dollars.

In answer to the question: What is the skill to luck ratio in poker? Greg Raymer replied:

"It is 100% skill. While one hand of poker is all luck, once you play regularly, you can attribute your long term results entirely to skill. I've made a profit now every year for 14 years. It is pretty unlikely that I've simply been that lucky for that long, now isn't it?"

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OK that's 2004 WSOP Champion Greg Raymer agreeing with me. As I have written before: "there is no luck in poker" but I will go along with the Champ that short term there may be statistical variations or variance that appears to be the phenomenon that some superstitious people prefer to call luck. But skill and knowledge wins out in the end, as long as you stay away from the craps tables and the prop bets and the "other" distractions that inevitably surround every card room around the world.

The 2004 WSOP Champion was just felled by pocket aces. The personable former attorney battled with a short stack all day and finally got all in with pocket eights against the aces. An ace flopped and an eight hit on the river to pour salt in the wound.

With the ESPN cameras filming, Raymer jokingly threw the ace off the board and into the muck and grabbed a replacement card out of the deck. Any guesses what it was? Yep, the case ace.