It was in 2003 when an unknown accountant went on to win his first World Series of Poker and a whopping $2.5 million. Ever since that win, Chris Moneymaker has become one of the most well known poker players on the circuit. Since 2003, Moneymaker has turned to poker as a full time career and has won a number of tournaments but has never managed to win another WSOP tournament.
Moneymaker is now an event ambassador of the Hollywood Poker Open (HPO) and will visit Charles Town to compete in one of the regional event. The HPO has a series of 7 stops and the 5th stop is the event at Charles Town.
Moneymaker also played the 4th stop in St Louis and was the eventual winner of the event. His presence at Charles Town will be a huge draw for the tournament as a number of amateur and professional poker players will want to say that they played against Chris Moneymaker.
Moneymaker said the competition was extremely fierce today and a lot more advanced when compared to early 2000. In a statement, Moneymaker said
By far just the amount of knowledge that’s out there in the game and the resources that people have to improve on their game. Back in 2003, there were a handful of [poker] books and most of them had bad information. Now there’s hundreds, probably thousands of books. There’s training sites.
There’s coaches. Someone who picks up the game today – if they’re serious about it – they can learn the right way to play in a short period of time, where they just didn’t have those tools available back in 2003 or prior
Both time and the strain of playing competitive poker for a period of ten years has taken its toll on Moneymaker. The former WSOP Champion spoke about how when he started out he could travel extensively, play 60 hour sessions and recover pretty fast. Moneymaker is now 38 and a father of three kids. His priorities have changed and so has his body. He travels a lot less and has to put in a lot of effort to play a 10 hour session as his recovery times are a lot slower.
Moneymaker is positive about his future in poker and expects to notch up some serious wins in the near future. He continued
I’ve been working hard on my game. After I won [the World Series] it’s no secret I got complacent. I thought I had the game figured out. …
No point in studying anymore. And all these young geniuses are spending 24 hours a day analyzing the game and I’m off on vacation with my family and kids while they’re working.
I realized that a couple years had passed and results weren’t where they needed to be, so I got back to work and found some players who do work 24 hours a day on the game and picked their brain.
