With a name like Chris Moneymaker, one would think the guy would be hard pressed to do anything other than live up to it. Well, as the fates and pro poker tables would have it, this young poker player born on November 21, 1975 in Atlanta, Georgia sure had the luck of the game with him with a nickname that earns him big dollars – yes, you guessed right, his moniker is money!
Far from his birthplace, Chris now lives in the home of country music – Nashville in Tennessee and is associated with PokerStars.
If one would read about his early days, Chris started off in a completely different direction from the fulltilt poker download as he earned a graduate degree from Tennessee State University then went on to earn a masters in accounting. However, it could well be the love for numbers that soon had Chris adding up some pretty big ones for his wins when he got interested in online poker around the same time; he began working on his new hobby with extra vigor.
He got hooked on Texas Hold’em poker. Of course, at the time he was practicing his games and also holding down an accountant’s job and so Chris hadn’t imagined himself as a pro or that he’d be one of the biggest influences in the game!
But, he rose to poker stardom fast and proved to be an inspiration for many new poker players who dream of making a win like Chris MoneyMaker when he signed up for the $39 satellite hosted by PokerStars, a popular online card room that he won and through which he subsequently secured a seat in a bigger satellite game for. This larger satellite eventually got Chris the prize for competing in the WSOP Main Event.
Very early in the tournament, Lou Diamond a pro sports handicapper noticed Chris’ skills and called him the dark horse, which he quite well turned out to be because he emerged as the big winner of the tournament!
Thereafter, Chris competed with many other amateur poker players and won over them easily enough while also battling it out with established players like Howard Lederer, Paul Darden and Johnny Chan. Chris reached the final table position and was pitted against veteran poker player Sammy Farha and this is where he proved that even as an amateur he could perform consistently, especially when he moved all-in on with a king-high move during a pivotal bluff. Of course, he won the first prize, which was a cool $2.5 million and went on to achieve instant poker stardom in Las Vegas from that moment on. The memory is an unforgettable one for Chris also because this was his first time playing live poker in a tournament, not just because of the huge monetary win.
Chris’s gaming style earned him the tag of the ‘Moneymaker Effect’ because his keen sense of judgment and cool headedness during play with world class poker stars inspired a global online poker phenomenon of sorts as millions started playing in virtual card rooms hoping to have a taste of the moneymaker effect rub off on them.
Needless to say, post the WSOP win, Chris quit his job and became a celebrity spokesperson for Full Tilt that won him his stardom and traveled and played in bigger buy-in tourneys for some years. In 2008, Chris’s total earnings from live tournaments had crossed the $2,800,000, of which $2,532,041 was attributed to wins at the WSOP.