The Moneymaker Effect - 5 Years Later

Five years ago, were you a poker player? If you’re like myself or millions of others, that answer is “no”. It’s hard to believe, but we’re coming up on the five year anniversary of Chris Moneymaker’s impossible win at the 2003 World Series of Poker. While watching yet another rerun of the final table on ESPN a few days ago, I found myself looking back at what would soon become a cultural phemonenon.

Back then, I could only imagine what a professional poker player was like. In my mind I had created the image of grizzly, rough & tumble, mob-like characters. They were well dressed, smoked a lot, and if they didn’t like ya’ they ‘got rid’ of you. They were smart & crafty, they were cool characters, they were….Sammy Farha.

One look at Sam Farha said “bad-ass poker player.” He was a poker player’s player. We knew he was the real deal, we knew he was the man to fear. Never did we fear 1995 WSOP champ Dan Harrington. Dan Harrington was our weird uncle. He was the one who looked at our female cousins just a little too long. And that hat? Ughh. No, we didn’t fear Uncle Dan.

What about Jason Lester or Tomer Benvenisti? Nope, nothing to fear there either. Lester looked scared. We didn’t fear him. Tomer? He’s the guy who was talking about respect being like the wind and other stupid shit. We laughed at Tomer, his fate was inevitable.

What many of us didn’t know was that the final table also consisted of three other great players. It’s possible you’ve even forgotten that David Singer, Amir Vahedi, and David Grey were also at that final table. Looking back, that fact only makes Moneymaker’s feat even more incredible.

And a guy named Yung Pak….uh, yeah.

So, it was the Moneymaker - Farha show. David vs Goliath.

I could hardly stand it, it was so exciting. Could this 27 year old kid, who qualified to play in the tournament through a $40 satellite take down the real deal? It really was straight out of a storybook. I mean, the guys name was ‘Moneymaker’ for god’s sake! If it weren’t real, you’d never believe it. If it had been a fictional movie, you’d walk out saying “that was so stupid, they even named the guy Moneymaker, do they think we’re stupid!?”

But it was real, and America watched. We watched it over and over again, it seemed like ESPN had nothing else to air.

I called my mother who lived in Las Vegas at the time. I asked her to send me 10 casino poker chips so I could learn to shuffle. When my wife and I visited over Christmas, I played Texas Hold’em with my family for the very first time (and I taught myself to shuffle).

We wanted to play, and we discovered online poker. Not many of us knew online poker even existed before we watched this tournament. We saw Party Poker ads by the truckload, and to Party Poker we went. Then we went to Pokerstars, Pacific Poker, Paradise Poker, and to dozens of other places to play. The poker rooms at casinos became packed full of players who wanted to learn the game, convinced they could win. The poker rooms got bigger, and moved from far corners of the casinos into prominent, more valuable floor space. They got bigger, and casinos spent tens of millions of dollars to build us better places to play and drive in the traffic. Soon, the rest of the world would catch on too. Online poker has become a worldwide attraction, and also an attraction of lawmakers.

With the growing popularity of the game internationally, online poker has come under fire by countries around the globe. Some countries support the game, and have found ways to properly regulate and tax it. Other countries, for various reasons have outlawed or have tried to outlaw the game. In the United States, the government passed the UIGEA, or Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Fortunately for online poker players, the same government that passed this convoluted bill are having trouble figuring out how to enforce it. While some European countries have embraced online poker, others have not. The European Union is now battling countries who want to either ban online poker, or run governmental monopolies of the game. As the game continues to grow around the world, there will certainly be more battles for online poker developing over the next several years.

All of this started with one fateful final table at the 2003 World Series of Poker. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years, Chris Moneymaker went on to beat Sammy Farha. With one incredible bluff that had the whole world holding it’s breath, and one final hand that sealed the fate of poker, the world discovered Texas Hold’em. Where would poker be today without that day? Only assumptions can be made. Poker may have been invented in the 1800’s, but this was the day the game was born.

Since that day, there have been many to criticize Chris Moneymaker, calling him a ‘fluke’. Whether he was a fluke or not isn’t the point. He’s the man that changed the game, he’s the man responsible for each of us finding the game we now love. He’s the one we all wanted to become, and that’s precisely why we began to play. To criticize his post-2003 WSOP results is to criticize the Wright brothers for not inventing the jet engine. They invented the airplane and gave the world belief in flight. Chris Moneymaker didn’t invent poker, but he showed the world that Joe Anybody could play, and made us believe we could win. Prior to his winning the World Series, the number of people worldwide that called themselves ‘poker players’ were in the low-thousands at best. Today there are millions of people worldwide that call themselves poker players. Anyone who has picked up the game since the 2003 WSOP owes Chris Moneymaker a ‘thank you’ and their respect. In one way or another, his giant win is the reason you play. If you understand the concept of the ’butterfly effect’, then you should understand why the post-2003 WSOP is called the ‘Moneymaker Effect’. Those who criticize him expose their own ignorance.

Sammy Farha also played a larger role than most give him credit for. Imagine that it wasn’t Sammy Farha as the heads-up opponent. Imagine it had been Tomer Benvenisti. What thrill would there have been, what intensity? Whether Chris had won or not, it would not have been the David vs Goliath ending that it was. It would have been one of the most anti-climactic WSOP wins ever televised. Sammy was the player that we feared, he was the one person we didn’t want Chris to face heads-up. Sammy had the swagger, the cigarette, the suit, the experience, and an attitude to make even professional players quiver. He was the perfect opponent to help propel Chris and poker itself into the forefront of millions worldwide. It couldn’t have been scripted any better.

Thanks Sammy, you’re still the baddest dude in poker.

Thanks again Chris, you’re still the man.

Webmasters Note: There’s gonna be a cool, new site coming called BurnPoker.com. We know the owners and the types of sites they build, it should be great. The topic of the site will be dealers choice poker, which should be a lot of fun for you home-gamers! The site should be up and running soon.