Chris moneymaker poker boom

I n , Benny Binion put together a publicity stunt to promote his casino in downtown Las Vegas. In the four decades since, the basic rules of the tournament and the amount of money required to enter have remained constant. But the number of participants has not. The World Series of Poker main event surpassed players for the first time in The 34th-annual World Series of Poker transformed the event into a pop-culture phenomenon.

Poker went from a game understood by few and played in smoky backrooms to a television staple. In this 10th-anniversary oral history, more than 30 people who were part of the event explain what happened and what it meant for the poker business. There was a poker room, but I never went in because there were about 15 or 20 guys in there and the average age was about 70 years old, and they looked miserable. Me and my friends, we had a home game. Brian Koppelman Rounders cowriter, Grantland contributor: Within the poker world, Rounders had become important.

It was the cultural touchstone for poker at the time. When David Levien and I were writing the movie, all we wanted was for it to be what Diner was for us: But we were always really frustrated there was no hole card view. Henry Orenstein poker player, inventor: I called my engineers in, and within about four weeks we had a working model. Cory Zeidman main event 39th-place finisher: Those old World Series broadcasts of Gabe Kaplan doing commentary, those were torturous!

The same exact movie. The crowd was really surprised when the cards turned over — it was awesome. But when we played the one where you could see that Matt had flopped the straight, the crowd was on the edge of their seats hoping that [John] Malkovich would fall for it. They were completely engaged. It was exactly the hole-card phenomenon.

John Vorhaus poker journalist, novelist: With the invention of the hole cam, we have the omniscience as an audience that we never had before. Suddenly, we can look at poker as an exercise in storytelling. Kenna James 38th-place finisher: People were ashamed to tell their families that they played poker. They would lie and not admit that they enjoyed going to play a game of poker after work.

There was still a lot of cheating going on. But it was slowly growing out of that. And this was the tipping point. Matt Maranz executive producer, Productions: What I had been pitching was a documentary.

They had a different idea. What I was pitching is not the World Series as you know it. Annie Duke 47th-place finisher: I was very stiff in my assessment that nobody would ever want to watch poker on television. Dave Swartz coordinating producer, Productions: Poker had this stereotype of backroom games, cigar smoke, maybe some seediness to it.

When we sat down to interview people, we knew right away — wow, we have met our match. These are really interesting, intelligent people who think about a game on a level no one really realized at the time. It was a unique breed of person who decided to become a professional poker player.

Everyone had an interesting story how they got to that seat. And we were confident that was going to resonate. Phil Hellmuth 27th-place finisher: I think Matt Maranz is a genius. He brought personality into poker. The World Poker Tour brought cards; Matt Maranz brought personality. We wanted to make as many shows as possible out of this. You set up once and shoot as much as possible while you can. And in some regards, the earlier part of the competition is more interesting. But all the famous players and stars and personalities are there on Day 1, and you can actually showcase them and build arcs and story lines to get to the final table.

Bob Chesterman senior coordinating producer, ESPN Original Entertainment: When Matt and Dave made the connections with the players, everybody understood that we were really putting our time and effort into this project and we really started to gain the trust of everybody.

The mechanics of the cameras were difficult. Most people understood this was part of a greater good for the game. Fred Christenson senior director of programming, ESPN: The last major hurdle was that, whatever the gaming licensing governing body of Nevada, we had to get their approval on using the hole-card cameras. Mike Antinoro senior coordinating producer, ESPN Original Entertainment: I got their concern. Phil Hellmuth, actually, was a huge help in this.

Phil took it upon himself to convince them to allow hole cameras. So you can either be ahead or behind. I think we got it resolved just one day before the main event started.

It was too close for comfort. Before I really started playing poker, I was down, overall, as a gambler. I might have been a losing gambler, but I was a profitable poker player. I started playing some in the casino down in Tunica, and down there, an old guy told me about online poker and I ended up getting on PokerStars. George Fisher, who was the director of poker operations at the Horseshoe, developed a relationship with three or four sites, including PokerStars, and PokerStars agreed to run some qualifying satellites online.

I would normally keep a couple thousand dollars in my PokerStars account. The satellites and the cash tournaments were all grouped together. I just jumped in and started playing. It turned out it was a satellite where the winner earned entry into another satellite where the top three finishers would get a seat in the World Series of Poker main event.

If I knew I never would have played it. I knew he was playing an online tournament. I did not know the significance — that it was for a seat in the World Series main event.

I won the first satellite, then I made it down to the final table in the final satellite, and I was one of the chip leaders. My friend Bruce [Peery] was watching me play from another computer, and he saw me starting to lose chips. Take the dang seat! I play as a hobby. So I went ahead and won the seat. What the hell is that? It was like buying a lotto ticket. Chris told me he wanted to sell a percentage.

It was a little bit of both. That detail sort of got lost in the shuffle. You know how you get one of those weird feelings? PokerStars had them signing up for the tournament en masse. And I had no idea, of course, but in that line was a certain fella named Chris Moneymaker, who ultimately changed poker history.

Dan Goldman vice-president of marketing, PokerStars: We had 37 qualifiers entered. That was the most of any site. We knew that it was going to be on ESPN. We wanted to try to get some brand exposure on national television for less than it cost to buy advertising. Although, there were a lot of discussions over whether it made sense to send a measurable chunk of our liquidity to a brick-and-mortar casino.

And back in , online sites were viewed by casinos and poker rooms as competition. The card rooms that we wanted to do business with saw us as a threat, as an alternative to playing live poker. Norman Chad ESPN color analyst: We had a Las Vegas local who helped us a lot with the production, called Lou Diamond.

If you need anything done, he knows a guy who knows a guy. Two phone calls and he can get it done. Lou Diamond sports handicapper, ESPN production assistant: In the beginning, he just wanted to get some information over drinks and dinner.

First showdown I ever get in is with Chris Moneymaker. All of a sudden, he stares at me with them sunglasses. When I tell you intimidated, the goose bumps, hair raising on your arms, everything. This whole vibe came over me. So I was like, Who the hell is this guy and why is he looking at me like this?

So he beats me, he wins the table. You got an opportunity, you know? I know I played satellites beforehand. And I had beers with several different people. I was trying to sell pieces of it. Monday rolls around, first day of the tournament, I get into my first meeting with ESPN. All the producers were there. I like the way you play, you look focused. Barry Greenstein 49th-place finisher: Each year, the main event was getting to be bigger and bigger.

It reached players in ; the year before was in the s. One of the real milestones was the first time the main event hit a million dollars for first place. Peter Alson poker journalist: That was the beginning of feeling like the Internet was having an influence. It jumped about people from the year before, and we knew that was largely due to the Internet.

There was a definite lack of space for tables. We had to yank out all the seats in the sportsbook and the deli next to it. Howard Lederer 19th-place finisher: Everyone was always sweating that number. How many people are going to play?

You were sitting down at the most important tournament of the year, and it really does mean everything to you. This was the pre-Internet crowd, so this is Amarillo Slim and Doyle Brunson and Howard Lederer and Johnny Chan. It was a great, odd cross section of old-time gambling America. Jeff Shulman 31st-place finisher, Card Player magazine editor: The first thing I remember thinking is, Wow, every single player in this room is wearing sunglasses.

Greg Raymer WSOP champion: Back then, you tended to know people. You knew most of the names and the faces. You looked across the table and you saw one or two guys with a PokerStars T-shirt.

It was awfully nice of the Internet players to point themselves out to us. Dan Harrington third-place finisher: Honestly, there was no thought in my head of winning this thing. Literally, this was my whole strategy: I remember having a conversation with Chris in which he was comparing the structure of the World Series to the structure of the tournaments he had played online, and that was the point at which I learned this was his first live tournament.

The PokerStars guys must have thought I was just a yahoo that had zero chance to win. I can fold my way to Day 2! He was playing super-tight.

I had to look at the pictures on the wall of the past champions and see who he was. I absolutely remember playing with Chris that first day, because he was giving me trouble. Just some kid off the Internet. I overslept on Day 2 and I literally thought I was going to be eliminated. But back then, I thought I was done. Moneymaker was at my table on Day 2, and I remember there was something about his sunglasses where you could see the reflection of his chips and the table.

His sunglasses were so shielding of his eyes — that was a little different than what I was used to seeing at the poker table. His were just pure mirrors. I also remember he was drinking a lot of Red Bulls. My Day 2 table included Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey. He was a young black kid with a lot of chips. But I struggled on Day 2, and my struggle was with Johnny Chan. Chan was just abusing me. You always think that your opponent has the best hand.

But they hardly ever do. Sam Farha second-place finisher: There was no big cash game, so I decided to play the main event at the last minute. Sammy and I were together at the end of Day 2, and I had a straight draw and I semibluffed all-in with one card to go against Sammy. He called and I hit my straight on the river. Sammy got up from the table and started leaving.

And somebody calls him, and he doubles up. And the very next hand, he goes all-in dark again. And someone calls him, and he doubles up to 20, There were seven hands left in the night, and he proceeds to play all seven.

And I thought to myself, Is this for real? I think it might have been at the end of Day 3 or on Day 4. The CBS affiliate in Los Angeles wanted to interview Chris. Is Chris Moneymaker his real name? When I looked at the Day 3 table draw and I saw Chan two seats to my left, that brought a lot of heartache.

He was at a very scary table. Not just Chan, but Howard Lederer was there as well, and a couple of other good pros. I remember not wanting to scare him, but wanting him to be alert to what he was dealing with. But I was horrified. It was Table The table was scary, but at least it was the TV table, so our brand was going to get on TV. On my first televised hand, I forgot I had a hand.

I was in the big blind, Howard and Johnny were deep into a hand, Johnny had raised pre-flop, and Howard had three-bet 14 him. I had no information on either of them, so I was trying to pick up any kind of tell I could. I went into crunch-time study mode, trying to figure out what they might be holding.

I think we were probably waiting for two or three minutes. He just had no idea. I mean, he was an Internet player. He was not a fast player, so the first 30 seconds was no big deal. But then it got a little out of hand. But Chan only had K-J — he was probably anxious to muck his hand.

So finally he said something. That guy won two years in a row, back-to-back. It was the last hand before a break. It was an ace-high flop with two hearts, and I had A-8 of hearts. I bet, he raised, I put him all-in, and Johnny called. He had K-5 of hearts. I was percent shocked that he made that call with that hand, because I was still thinking that the pros always have monster hands. When he called, I thought I needed to catch a heart. I thought I was behind, I thought he had A-K or better.

When he flipped his hand up, I was shocked. He just ran into the one hand he did not want to see. Matt Savage WSOP tournament director: I mean, if an amateur wins, is that bad for poker because it suggests the game is all luck? But as it turns out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Our coverage, we started with like 40 players we were tracking from the beginning.

At that point, of course, you have no idea who Moneymaker is, and Johnny Chan is Johnny Chan. So you start going to Plan B. Lon McEachern ESPN play-by-play announcer: You go find a hero that people want to see, and if he gets knocked out, then the person that knocks him out becomes the hero and you can follow him.

Every step was perfectly placed like a jigsaw puzzle to the end. That was the hand that won me the tournament, because of the confidence factor. When I busted Chan, that was like beating Mike Tyson. I had a business trip that conflicted with the start of the tournament.

When I got there on Wednesday, he had just knocked out Johnny Chan. It was Chris, Bruce, and I. We stayed together in the same room the rest of the week. It was a dump, and then as Chris was winning they were going to upgrade us, but he was superstitious: We took the same path to the poker room every day, we wore the same shirts and hats.

I went out there with Chris for the weekend leading up to the tournament, then I came home on Day 1. Can you get back?

The first time they showed me on TV, they described me as an investor from Houston. I was a full-time poker player. I was never an investor. But I gave that image to a lot of players. Daniel Negreanu poker pro: I played with Sammy on Day 3, and it was clear that he had control of the table. He had a big stack of chips and he was talking his way through a lot of hands and he was really confusing a lot of people.

Sammy was such a thrill. He would put pressure on, and boy, the way he was able to get to , in chips before the next guy even had 30, or 40,, it just happened over and over.

And then he would lose them somehow.

Poker boom - Wikipedia

I am a crazy player, but within reason. Which, I am crazy, but I know when to lay it down. I remember one hand, I laid down top two pair. And if I called, I would have lost. The guy showed me bottom set.

Humberto is a really tight player. And then I heard later that he got busted by Moneymaker, where he got all-in with the best hand and Moneymaker hit the two-outer. My read was that he was beat, so I went with it. And obviously it was incorrect, so I had to go to Plan B and suck out.

But what it told me was that he was beyond the point where he was afraid to take risks. That hand told me that the guy had big balls. Look, he got lucky. He moved in with eights against Humberto and hit his two-outer. And another thing I have to say about Moneymaker is that he was mentally tough. Dan Harrington once told me that one of the most important things you do in a poker tournament is you try and identify the guy at the table at that moment who wants to leave.

Just the pressure of being in the main event is making them so uncomfortable that they want to get out of there. I was always waiting for that to happen to Moneymaker, and it never did. Then we went check-check on the flop. And the turn came around, and I had A-3, which was complete air. He made a tiny bet, 15, So I decided I was going to raise 15, And then he came back over the top of me another 15, On the river, he checked and I shoved all-in, and he folded pretty quickly.

The first time I really started taking notice of Chris was through his confrontations with Dutch Boyd. Dutch was one of these interesting characters who caught our eye early on.

Dutch Boyd 12th-place finisher: The night before my interview with ESPN, I was really thinking about how it would appear on TV. I knew they were looking for little sound bites that were going to look good on TV.

I thought about it, that I needed to make sure I had long pauses between little sound bites and try to make their job easy. Dutch Boyd was aggravating me so much. I like to play fast. I was playing with Moneymaker on Day 4. I got a pretty good tell on him. He was the kind of player who, if you checked to him, he was going to bet. And he had something, it was almost like out of a Hollywood movie, where he would flare his nostrils when he was weak.

It was like a bunny, man. So I was like, This is going to be so easy. The flop was , and I had pocket threes. Dutch had me covered, and he raised me all-in. I was in the zone at that point. My instinct was that he had two overcards. Pre-flop, he bet and I called, and when I called, I remember he shot me a look like, Oh crap, what the hell are you doing in my pot? It was more of a concerned look than a confident look. So I went through my head trying to figure out what he could have, and my first instinct is he has A-K, A-Q.

It turned out it was K-Q. Even if I was bluffing, I could easily be bluffing with better. You hear all the time about people getting it in with aces in the main event and losing. Chris was all-in against me.

Seventy percent of the time he wins. Thirty percent of the time, the whole poker world is different. I knocked out Phil Ivey. It was a great read, but you could still argue that, if you know all the mathematical possibilities, it was incorrect to call for your tournament life.

Chris just played the game differently. He just went with his guts. And it worked for him. He was playing the game differently — in large part because he was different. He knew pocket threes was the best, and it was! Where do they come from, that they play like this? This is not poker. One thing I regret doing was going all-in. I feel like if I would have re-raised the minimum, or re-raised like two and a half times his bet, it would have looked a lot less like a bluff.

Hey, he made a good read. But I could have been trying to push him around with fours. That was a turning-point hand. The hand with Dutch gave Chris the confidence to go with his reads. I told him about his nostrils tell after I was eliminated. Dutch Boyd told me about that tell after he busted from the tournament.

To be honest, for the first three or four days, I never really bluffed, so my nostrils were never really flaring. It still hurts, thinking about how close I came. It feels like fate. The universe wants you to win. I got eliminated on Day 4, in 19th place.

That elimination was the most disappointing, devastating elimination of my poker career. And I may not have known it then, but I felt it, that that might be my last chance in the main event.

I knew there were going to be even more people the next year. Once we got down to the final 10 players — one elimination from the final table — we moved everyone to one table. But we only had nine cameras on the table. So two people had to share. I was playing snug as a bug in a rug when we got down to I wanted to make the final table.

The only hand I played handed was the A-Q hand against Ivey. Obviously, Chris Moneymaker is the big story to come out of that World Series of Poker.

But the next biggest thing that happened was the birth of Ivey. He was becoming the most intimidating tournament player in the world that year. Everybody thinks that I got lucky against Ivey. I raised pre-flop with A-Q, Jason Lester had 10s, Phil Ivey had nines, they both flatted, 18 the flop was Q-Q And it came around to me and I bet 75,, and Ivey only had about , left.

Jason folded his 10s, Ivey called with his nines. He hit a nine on the turn. I just got the better end of it when I hit an ace on the river. It definitely bothered Phil.

But at the same time, he had so much determination and focus and confidence that he just assumed he was going to do it again next year and he was going to do it again every year.

Still, it took him a little while to get over that one. Moneymaker busted Ivey and Chan. I wish I could have bet on Chris back on Day 1 or Day 2. Even though Moneymaker was the chip leader, people were not thinking he had a chance. It was a tough table, nobody expected that lead to hold up. The table was tough. You have Jason Lester, Dan Harrington, David Grey, Amir Vahedi. Nobody paid attention to him, because who cares?

I stopped by the final table just to see who was left. There was Sammy Farha, who put a bad beat on me earlier in the event. And I saw this kid, Moneymaker. Amir was the craziest person at the table. Sammy was the second-craziest. Amir took over the chip lead from Moneymaker early at the final table. Then he just imploded. To watch that, if you were a friend of Amir Vahedi, I still look at that and cringe.

Vahedi got to where he was in the tournament because he took chances at key times. He kept betting into Sam and Sam had a flopped set of nines, and Sam played the hand very well. He knew what Vahedi was about, that Vahedi was going to try to take him off the hand. You have a good chance to win the tournament. I flopped top set. I was surprised he was bluffing. A lot of players think that way.

I was fortunate to get paid off with a full house, that the guy decided to bluff there. That was what Amir Vahedi did the whole tournament. His collapse happened quickly.

In real time — about two or three hours — he went from chip leader to busted. The charm of the World Series of Poker was you played until somebody won. You play overnight, you play until the sun comes up, you play until somebody caves and somebody wins. We played longer days than we planned because we had more players than we expected. So exhaustion was definitely part of it. As the final table wore on, we heard so many stories about how Sammy Farha had played all night — and he had.

For five days, I had no sleep. I did not sleep. And the last day, the reason I lasted, I drank 20 Red Bulls, about 20 cups of coffee. I could not function. If you get down near the end, where victory depends on you being alert, I could dig down and get something out of myself to give that final push. Well, at that final table, I dug down, and there was nothing there. I hit the wall.

When it got down to me, Sammy, and Chris, I wanted to bet 75,, which was the right bet for that situation. I had a whole bunch of 25, chips in front of me, and I could not figure out how to get to 75, It was an insurmountable problem. For the first part of the final table, my plan was to sit back and let other people eliminate each other until it gets short-handed. I just started raising every single hand.

I was just crushing them. I felt like I was on steroids. The next year, I was at the final table again.

I was sitting next to a younger player. He nudged me and said: I was really confident — and then they brought out two and a half million dollars and put it on the table in front of me. When they brought that money up the escalator and they walked over with shotguns and armed guards and they dumped that money on the table, Chris turned his hat around, and he came over to us, and he was breathing hard.

Chris Moneymaker talks poker boom and current life before Hollywood Poker Open - tribunedigital-baltimoresun

The stress really kicked in when I saw the money. So I started thinking maybe Sam and I need to talk about a deal here. At the time, I thought he was joking.

I think I need a little bit more. Erik Seidel poker pro: Watching Chris Moneymaker and Sammy Farha go heads-up, it was out of a movie script. You had the established pro who had the look and feel of everything you ever thought poker was going up against this kid with the crazy name who by all historical data had no business being there. All the way down to the finish, I never thought Chris had a chance to beat Sammy Farha. Plus I was rooting for Sammy Farha because I was a moron.

I just had no idea that Chris Moneymaker winning was going to be the engine that drives the car in terms of the poker boom. The conversation in the bathroom helped me figure out what he wanted to do. Sammy normally likes to play big pots. That hand was totally derived from the conversation we had in the bathroom.

That was a great hand, and you knew it was a great hand as it was happening. Even now, 10 years after that, people are talking about that as the single best hand in televised poker history. I had K-7, Sammy had Q A good player, when he raises on the button pre-flop, he continues, on the flop, to bet. So I checked, and he checked on the button. Even though he raised pre-flop, he does not do a continuation bet. The turn was the eight of spades. That gave me the second nut flush draw and an open-ended straight draw.

I want him to fold. And when he calls, I immediately think he has the ace of spades and like a six or seven in his hand. But I thought there was a good chance he could have a similar draw to what I have, and I thought he had the ace of spades. So my plan on the river was actually to ship any river that was not a spade.

It would even be a stretch for him to call me with two pair. When he raised, I knew he was on the draw.

At the end of the day, I bricked. The river was a blank, the three of hearts. But I went with Plan A. I remember Amir talked with Sam in a hand earlier in the day, and the second that Amir said something, Sam called. Just be a statue.

And the reason I mucked it is because I started talking to myself and I doubted myself. When you take a long time, you lose your instinct. My plan went perfect. But I changed my plan. I thought Chris had a hand. I guess Sammy thought the same thing. I think they basically captured it on TV, how long he took to fold. It was just a great play by Moneymaker. He had no fear. That was a great World Series moment.

I was sitting next to Chris Ferguson. It was the worst bluff of the year, but it worked for one reason: I bluffed myself out. He thinks it was a mistake and he played it badly, and he gives no credit to Chris Moneymaker at all. Only one person was allowed to watch the feeds from the hole-card cameras.

Over in a corner of the Horseshoe, with a security officer standing guard, behind the black curtain is essentially Oz — the only person in the world who knows what both players have. Are you kidding me? Everybody assumed Sammy had made a great fold. It ended the very next hand. After I pulled that bluff off, I could tell he was agitated.

And it just so happens the very next hand, I flopped bottom two on a J flop. I was thinking, Please, just give him a jack! I had top pair, and boom, he had bottom two pair. And he broke me. So that tells you it was meant to be his. After he won, immediately, I ran down and we hugged. It was just spontaneous. And if you listen on TV, when we hugged, you could hear a crack. I forgot I did an interview. I think I was so high on adrenaline.

You can be proud of him. After my work was done that night I turned off my cell phone and went to bed. When I woke up, my voice mail was full. I realized that poker had changed, the World Series had changed, my life had changed. And then Chris Moneymaker was on Letterman a couple weeks later. My biggest fear was public speaking.

Obviously, over time, they got easier. But they had to push pretty damn hard to get me to do Letterman. Part of the PokerStars contract for the World Series was you agreed to represent PokerStars. He and I talked about it over that weekend. When I was driving back from Las Vegas to L. In fact, he was calling me from work. Take a couple days and consider how this is going to affect your future. Chris quit his job.

One of the big changes in my life is that I got divorced that year. The main reason was me wanting to be a traveling poker pro. She was married to a stay-at-home accountant who was not traveling the world, gone all the time, and gambling a lot of money.

And it was a choice I had to make. Chris had come out to Los Angeles and shot some TV commercials with us before the World Series started airing.

I walked off the plane and I got mobbed. When the first episode aired, the ratings were good. Initially, ESPN was like, that has to be one of those ratings statistical blips. So they put it on again and it did really well. So they tried moving it around in different programming spots, because I think in their mind it just did not compute to what a successful television show was supposed to be.

They would try at two in morning, four in the morning, ten at night, and no matter where they re-aired it, it was getting big ratings. They were doing over a 1, which was unheard of. I had no idea, even if we put a great product on TV, that anyone would watch it. And I knew that the ratings were just going to grow each week in those seven broadcasts.

Remember, this is before poker entered anything close to the mainstream, so most of the people watching this had no idea who was going to win. It was plausibly live to them. This was word of mouth going around: Anywhere I went, we looked up months and months afterward, and we saw close-ups of Sam Farha and Chris Moneymaker. They were running that show forever. That period of time was the most exciting period for poker in its history. Seeing poker on ESPN in prime time — not only that, the coverage was fantastic, everything was exciting about it, it was so new and fresh.

Just feeling like, Oh my gosh, this is ready to explode! Erik Seidel called me the day after Moneymaker won. This is a well-known story: If he wins, we should give 5 percent of all our future earnings to him. Suddenly everybody was able to justify playing poker. You can see him doing Letterman , you can see him doing Leno. I was the one who saw the wave coming and told everybody.

Everybody used to laugh at me back then. But even I never thought it would get this big. Of course, it surpassed 2, It tripled in one year. In , the poker book section of your local bookstore section was half a shelf. By , it was a floor-to-ceiling rack. It was the perfect storm of the Internet and Moneymaker and television combined.

You had all these online sites advertising on all of these shows. People like to say Chris Moneymaker winning, it was the perfect storm, but realistically, his winning was less relevant than the hole-card camera and online poker. Poker was primed to take off. Poker was already taking off. Poker was going to boom in no matter who won. Actually, poker would have been more booming if Sammy would have won it, because Sammy would have had more money in his pocket, and gambling would be better.

The right guy won. I could do that, too. Maybe it would have doubled, but not tripled. At the World Series, we definitely were not anticipating 2, players. We ran out of chips! One night we had to open the bags up and replace some of the chips with smaller denominations. I was extremely surprised by the turnout the year I won.

And then it all came true. Moneymaker was the cherry on the sundae. I never thought in those terms. And I picked the best week in history to do that. For more about the WSOP Championship, listen to The Poker Edge , where Andrew Feldman talks to Chris Moneymaker and Eric Raskin. Poker , History , Events , General topics , Money , World Series of Poker , oral history. Bill Simmons on which NFL teams will claim the up-for grabs playoff spots.

Features The Triangle The Hollywood Prospectus Contributors Podcasts Video Quarterly ESPN. Illustration by Ryan Inzana Facebook Twitter Print. The Buildup to the Boom Chris Moneymaker: ESPN Antes Up Matt Maranz executive producer, Productions: The Chris Moneymaker Story Moneymaker: I went from 5, to 54, in the span of just a few hands. The Perfect Name Dalla: I went back to my job.

The Moneymaker Effect Lederer: