That’s why.įor every Negreanu and Ivey, there were 50 young guns who didn’t make it. And why not? If accountant-by-day Chris Moneymaker could win the World Series, and Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey – who didn’t even go to college – could successfully battle over six-figure pots on the show Poker After Dark, why couldn’t they?īecause it’s hard to gamble for a living. They dropped out of college or quit the new job that they had secured after college and moved away from family and friends to try their hand at being a professional poker player. Their backgrounds were all basically the same. Every month a young, new player would arrive on the scene, from Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, wherever.

The poker stories on ground zero, in the card rooms, were different from what was shown on TV and in magazines. The Bellagio and Commerce Casino in Los Angeles were my second homes when I wasn’t on the road playing blackjack – card counting and other advantage play techniques.

I’ve played 20,000 hours of poker in my life the majority of those hours played the decade after Moneymaker’s win. There were commercials, mainstream magazines filled with their ads, billboards and TV shows displaying their logos. PokerStars, Full Tilt and PartyPoker were the biggest poker sites in the world. The Moneymaker Effect led to tens of millions of new players nationally and globally. Since then the field has eclipsed 8,500 twice and routinely tops 6,000. The following year, the Main Event had more than three times that number of entrants. When he won 20 years ago, Moneymaker bested a field of 839 players. Poker quickly found its way into the American zeitgeist. And now we’re seeing sportsbooks try to replicate it. His win will forever be known for The Moneymaker Effect. An everyman accountant by day winning millions on TV against the best poker players in the world. To simply say Chris Moneymaker’s victory made headlines would be a crime. Moneymaker qualified for his $10,000 Main Event seat by winning smaller satellite tournaments online at PokerStars. In 2003, an unknown poker player named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event for $2.5 million.

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