Win the World Series of Poker and life falls into place, right? Not for the most famous World Champion of all
Downstairs, his fellow pros are playing 40,000 sit&gos and $2,000 a point Chinese poker. But Moneymaker is happy to stay in his luscious suite at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel, grinding it out at low levels. ‘I play online poker for shits and giggles,’ he says. ‘Of course, most of my money comes from endorsements. Less than 5% of my income actually comes playing online poker.’
Watching Moneymaker play online is a lot like watching your friends play. There is no pretence with him and he’ll happily curse himself when caught out on a bluff. His style is solid, if unspectacular while his hand analysis could not be more straightforward. He carries no superstar front; from the cluttered environment that encircles him to his scruffy out-of-bed look, he is still the poker ‘everyman’ right down to his toes.
There is one big difference, however: your average player doesn’t have dozens of online railbirds in tow. As I observe his play, there are no fewer than 28 people on the waiting list and the chatbox is overcrowded with incessant verbals. It’s mostly inane: ‘Go Moneymaker’; sometimes offensive: ‘Chris you suck at poker’; often fiscally-oriented: ‘Chris, can you lend me some money?’
‘It never stops. I’m used to it now,’ he sighs. One word answers unless the comments are ignored altogether are usually the only response Moneymaker offers: ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’. But then there are the one-hit wonders. The guys who wait for hours and hours for an empty seat to open up. ‘They just want to be able to tell their friends they took some money off Chris Moneymaker,’ he says wistfully.
Taking his seat with a minimum buy-in of $120 and folding every hand, ‘dR DoOF’ is one such character and not before long, pushes with Aces. On the big blind, Moneymaker picks up 8s, calls the raise and lands another 8 on the turn. ‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ he types, grinning. ‘Great playing with you you’re the best,’ comes dR DoOF’s reply with genuine warmth. It’s not a statement everyone in poker would agree with.
Back to the beginning
When I met up with Moneymaker at the start of the year for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, he admitted the buzz that surrounds his online presence is just as prevalent when he goes out. ‘After it [online poker] took off, it’s always been that way for me. People come up to me and say, My 15-year old kid loves you. I kind of understand what big-time celebrities go though. I appreciate and love all my fans, but I couldn’t imagine living every day of my life like that.’
Some would say that his adulation is undeserved, considering how little he has done in tournaments compared to PokerStars stablemates like Joe Hachem and Greg Raymer. In fact, out of all the World Champions from 1998-2005, his tournament record post-WSOP win is only better than 2002’s Robert Varkonyi. Since May 2003, Moneymaker’s tournament earnings total less than $270,000 and $200k of that derived from one event alone.
But perhaps such observations miss the point. Maybe Chris Moneymaker being Chris Moneymaker is enough. Remember his fairy tale story: an accountant dabbles in gambling from a young age and uses online poker as a side income. One day he decides to enter a WSOP $39 online satellite, playing for second place to collect $8,000. The winnings will help pay off his debts. A friend persuades him to go for the seat anyway. Moneymaker wins it and defeats the biggest field in WSOP history at the time. The fairytale, sadly, just about ends there.
The first problems occurred when he tried to go back to normal life. ‘Being an accountant didn’t excite me’, he says. ‘I made $40,000 [a year] and that was fine, but I could make $20,000 in one day, so it just didn’t make much sense for me to do that. It was a good life, but I had all these other opportunities open to me and I wanted to pursue them.
‘My wife didn’t agree; she didn’t want to be with a travelling poker player and thought it would be better if I stayed being an accountant. We have a good life, why change it? she would say. Every time I went out on an appearance, she’d complain. I said, If it’s not working for you, let’s just get a divorce because this is not how I want to live my life.’
The divorce threw up its own set of problems. ‘She wanted half of everything,’ he says through gritted teeth. For someone who had just won $2.5 million for a week’s work, you’d think this would be a painful, but sufferable, inevitability. But Moneymaker was not the sole beneficiary of the win. ‘I had backers,’ he says. ‘I gave 20% to my Dad and 20% to my friends so I walked away with $1.5m. I bought a new house and car, but the rest I didn’t spend at all. I told her to just take the money, leave me with my contracts and businesses we’d split it that way. By the time I was done with the divorce, I was close to being broke.’
Ground Zero
Starting from scratch at the beginning of 2004 was always going to have a motivating effect on his game which explains why he went on a roll in the first part of the year. In March, he came second in the WPT $5,000 Bay 101 Shooting Stars event a result that went a little way to expunging the widely-held belief that he luck-boxed his way through the WSOP. ‘Until you make a final table, people won’t think you’re doing anything,’ he says. ‘It’s funny how people perceive things.’ His run extended to September, by which time he had added a tenthplace in a WSOP pot-limit Omaha event and another WPT cash to his CV. But thereafter, the results dried up and continue to be conspicuous by their absence to this day.
Moneymaker acknowledges that his hunger for the game fell away. ‘I went through a lull in my tournament play. I didn’t know anything about the scene at all, not when a new tournament was coming up or when new shows were coming on,’ he says, switching off the laptop and swivelling round to face me for the first time. ‘I’d been so busy with my company [Moneymaker Gaming], spending time with my family and making tonnes of money in cash games online. I was content in doing that. Playing live with full tables was boring to me. When you play three-handed, you basically play every single hand. When I got to full-handed tournaments, I got anxious and found I had bastardised my game by only playing shorthanded. I was trying to raise every pot.’
Another distraction came in the form of a new relationship that subsequently blossomed into his second marriage. ‘I met a girl and she didn’t know what poker was and she had no idea who I was. I realised I’d found my soul-mate. She was completely supportive of everything I did. Even though she hated the travel, she went with me everywhere. Then we had a daughter. A daughter prohibits travel.
‘We had this grand plan for the WSOP 2005. We rented a house and I was going to play in every single event. First day we get there, it’s 115 degrees. We had a pool in the backyard, but it was so hot you couldn’t go out in it. You couldn’t get into the car without the heat bearing down. I was out every day playing poker. She [his wife] was out there a day and said, Listen, I love you, but I’m going home. Taylor [his daughter] is not going to enjoy this at all. I actually went back on the flight with them and decided I wasn’t going to play all the events; I’d play about five. My grandfather passed away in the middle of it too, so that was even more reason for me not to play.’
Money back guarantee
It’s a strange if commendable image of a man fleeing the scene of his greatest triumph; exiting stage left, when the world has come to watch you perform. But Moneymaker is not concerned with proving himself. He comes alive when talking about his motivation returning last December sparked as a result of the sudden crackdown on online poker in the US.
‘I realised that the life of an ambassador might be coming to an end, and I would have to start earning money in tournaments rather than having a cushy job and playing online. My manager was telling me how I needed to get out and start playing more. I told him I’d win two tournaments this year for him. If nothing else, I want to get out there and perform well for myself.
‘I’ve been told not to say this,’ he chuckles, ‘but last year at the PCA, I drank the whole way through the tournament. I was having a good time; I was on vacation more than anything else. I’ve been to several tournaments where I knew going into them that I was going to go out early and play cash games. I’m not going to do that anymore; I’m going to stick around and play them the way they should be played.’
It’s a convincing monologue, but there are too many contradictions in his answers to be entirely sold by it. When I ask Moneymaker about the possibility of leaving a legacy, he is unmoved. ‘My answer is always the same: If I really cared about that, I’d go out and play tonnes of tournaments. I play on average six or seven a year. I went through a time when I didn’t care at all. I care a little more now, but not so much to the point where I want to go out and play every tournament.
‘I’m happy with everything in my life,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t change a thing. If I don’t knock down some tournaments, it’s not going to affect my day-to-day life. As far as the legacy goes, I really don’t think about that very much. Other players have to be the best players in the world or be known as the best, I could care less. I want to provide for my family and make sure my family is taken care of.’
Thanks to his various enterprises and endorsements, Moneymaker’s financial situation seems to be secure. Certainly secure enough for him to turn down a ‘sick amount of money’ from one very wealthy guy who wanted to be tutored. ‘He said he was a huge fan of mine and loved the way I played, but I didn’t want to sit on his shoulder and watch him play.’
And Moneymaker’s situation is largely unaffected by how he fares in tournaments. His relationship with his sponsors, PokerStars, is not something either party is keen to end. ‘PokerStars treat me well and I don’t foresee myself going away from them,’ he says. Moneymaker was only required to go to two EPTs in Season 3 and although he had to play in the main events and do interviews, his time was mostly his own.
So when he’s on the road, life for the 27-year old millionaire is as you’d expect extremely chilled. He points to the PCA 2006 as a case in point. And it’s perhaps a significant factor in his continuing lack of success at the tables. His detractors would have you believe that it’s sure-fire proof of his lack of talent but anyone who churns through hundreds of players at the World Series has got to have some poker nous about them.
‘My game is not exactly what other people’s is, but I am happy with it,’ he says. ‘My game is all about getting a feel for the person at the table. In 2003, I made great reads and followed through with them. Now I make great reads and second-guess myself. I think everyone is making a play at me.’
Suburban slob
It’s hard to shake the impression, though, that the lack of continuing success doesn’t bother Moneymaker too greatly. Dayto- day life is pretty ‘relaxed’, he admits, lighting up the last cigarette in the pack. ‘My general day is: get up, play with my daughter, play online for a couple of hours, make lunch, spend time with the family in the afternoon, take a nap, play poker for an hour at night, watch a movie with my wife that’s pretty much my daily routine,’ he says, taking a long drag. ‘It’s a nice life. All my neighbours go off to work and I get to stay at home.’
Whoever Moneymaker’s critics may be, can he really be blamed him for not feeling that need to win every poker tournament or prove his worth in high-stakes cash games. We adorn respect on players who strive to win as many WPTs and WSOPs as they can but do we have the right to admonish those who have had their fill and just want to live an easy life?
And perhaps an easy life is all that Moneymaker’s critics want but can’t have. ‘They’re jealous these guys who want to have millions in the bank, but don’t,’ he says, his voice tinged with anger. ‘As long as I’m making money and supporting my family, I’m happy with that. I could be the worst player in the world, but as long as I’m doing that, what’s the difference?’
Poker Player magazine is full of World Series of Poker content and you can read it for free HERE
