Chris Moneymaker
Age: 28
From: Tennessee
Favorite Poker Game: Texas Hold'em
Favorite Online Poker Room: PokerStars
Chris Moneymaker is a poker player that proved
you don't need to be a big name in the poker world to win the big tournament
or make money playing online poker. Moneymaker, while his late twenties,
playing in a satellite poker tournament at PokerStars.com in which he entered with $39 went on to win the prestigous 2003 World Series of Poker.
Chris says his inspiration to play poker came after seeing the
movie "Rounders." Then Chris, along with some of his friends, starting
getting games together in which they played against each other.
After doing so for awhile, Chris wanted to play against other people
as well. With the nearest casino offering poker being over 200 miles
away, Chris found out one can play poker on the internet. The former
Universtiy of Tennessee accounting major then went on to win a seat
to the World Series of Poker and the rest was history. Chris Moneymaker
walked away with 2.5 million dollars in winnings.
The road to the WSOP seat started small and with no expectations. Chris openly admits that he didn't expect to do well and was just going to enter the Satellite with the attitude that he'd do the best he could. Chris started by besting the other 17 poker players in his group. The next level included more than 60 players in which the competition would be at a much more stiff level of play. To Chris's surprise, he was the last man standing and was off to the 2003 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Chris says that once in Las Vegas at the Horseshoe, his lack of
knowledge of the big name players in the tournament actually helped
to his advantage in helping him not get nervous. Moneymaker's only
concern was that he had very little live poker tournament experience
and that he may give off some poker tells. To prevent this potential
problem, Moneymaker dawned a pair of shades. With a goal of not getting
run the first day, Chris exceeded his own expectation and accrued
more than $60k in chips after day 1 of the tourney. Now Chris Moneymaker
was thinking above and beyond surviving, he realized he was in a
position to make some coin here. Chris Moneymaker then went on to go deep in the game and finished it out by besting Sammy Farha's flopped pair of jacks. Since his win at the 2003 World Series of Poker, Chris Moneymaker has played in the World Poker Finals, WPT Invitational, and the Bay 101 Shooting Stars. Chris notes that he still plays poker quite a bit and will be taking a shot in the No Limit Texas Hold'em events at the 2004 World Series of Poker. Chris also notes that since his new found fame players in poker rooms often times aggressively play against him just to say "they won a pot against Chris Moneymaker" which he said works out well because it's to his advantage :). Chris Moneymaker can be found playing in online Poker Tournaments at Poker Stars. Click the image below to download Poker Stars for free! For more on the story of Chris Moneymaker click here. 
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