Chris Moneymaker 2003: How His Win Started the Poker Boom

In May 2003, an accountant from Tennessee who had never played a live poker tournament won the World Series of Poker Main Event. Chris Moneymaker had reached the $10,000 buy-in championship through an online satellite on PokerStars, outlasted a field of 839 players at Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas, and beat Sam Farha heads-up for a $2.5 million first prize. When ESPN aired the event, commentator Norman Chad summed it up in one line: “This is beyond fairy tale. It’s inconceivable!”

The win of Chris Moneymaker in 2003 is remembered as the starting gun of the poker boom, the years in which tournament fields, online poker and televised poker all grew at a pace the game had never seen. This article tells that story using documented sources: how Moneymaker got his seat, what happened in Las Vegas, how much the World Series grew afterward, why the boom slowed, and which popular versions of the story don’t hold up.

The WSOP Before Chris Moneymaker in 2003

Before 2003, the Main Event was growing, but slowly. According to PokerNews’ historical results, the championship drew 512 players in 2000, 613 in 2001 and 631 in 2002, when Robert Varkonyi won $2 million. Each entrant paid $10,000 to play no-limit hold’em for the title, and in 2003 the series was held in May at Binion’s Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas.

The 2003 field of 839 was, as Card Player noted on the event’s tenth anniversary, the largest in WSOP history at the time. Part of that growth came from a new route into the tournament: online satellites. A satellite is a cheaper tournament whose prize is a seat in a more expensive one, so a player can win a $10,000 entry without paying $10,000. Card Player reported that PokerStars sent 33 players to the 2003 Main Event this way.

Moneymaker was one of them. The Las Vegas Review-Journal describes him as an accountant from Tennessee, and he qualified online rather than as a touring professional. Card Player has described the 2003 Main Event as his first live tournament ever. He would be sitting down with players who had spent decades at the game, including Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Humberto Brenes and Howard Lederer, all of whom were in the field that year according to ESPN. On paper, he was exactly the kind of entrant the professionals expected to collect chips from.

From an Online Satellite to $2.5 Million

The road to Las Vegas nearly ended before it began. In a 2018 interview with ESPN, Moneymaker explained that he entered a single-table online tournament thinking it was a sit-and-go with a cash prize, and only learned after winning that the prize was a seat in a $650 satellite for the Main Event. For years he believed, and repeated, that the first tournament cost $39. PokerStars later researched it and found it was an $86 single-table satellite. “I typically played the $39 two-table satellites, so I thought this was the one that I qualified through,” he told ESPN.

The second satellite created a decision of its own. With four players left, three would win Main Event seats and the fourth would take home roughly $8,000 in cash. Moneymaker told ESPN that amount was about what he owed on his credit card at the time, and that he was trying to finish fourth on purpose to take the money. A friend talked him out of it and offered $5,000 for half of his action, so he played to win the seat instead.

That arrangement fell apart within about a week. According to ESPN, Moneymaker learned that the friend had lost the promised money at a casino in Tunica. His father and another friend each put in $2,000, and with that backing he traveled to Las Vegas for the Main Event.

Inside Binion’s Horseshoe, the amateur kept advancing. Along the way he knocked out Phil Ivey, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal has recounted, and he reached the final table and then heads-up play against Sam Farha, a veteran professional. The most famous moment of that duel, a bluff that is retold in detail in the hand that sparked the poker boom, became one of the most replayed sequences in televised poker. Moneymaker closed out the match and won the title and the $2.5 million first prize.

The win reached far beyond the people in the room because of how it was shown. ESPN’s coverage of the 2003 World Series was, according to ESPN, the first time the network aired poker with the players’ hole cards visible, letting viewers see bluffs as they happened. The technology behind that is covered in how the hole-card camera turned poker into TV. An unknown accountant beating professionals, with every card on screen, made for television that viewers could imagine themselves inside.

The money also changed his life quickly. After the victory, ESPN reported, Moneymaker took a sponsorship deal with PokerStars that involved traveling to play live tournaments around the world. The site that had sent him to Las Vegas now had a world champion who had started at its online tables.

The Moneymaker Effect: How the Poker Boom Grew

The growth that followed is easiest to see in the Main Event’s own entry counts. The table below uses the historical figures published by PokerNews.

In three years, the Main Event field grew more than tenfold, from 839 to 8,773, and the first prize rose from $2.5 million to $12 million. Card Player reported that PokerStars alone sent 316 players to the 2004 Main Event and 1,116 in 2005, and that four of the nine 2004 final-table players had won their seats on the site, with Greg Raymer, another online qualifier, taking the title. The 2006 peak is told in the story of Jamie Gold’s $12 million run.

The period came to be called the Moneymaker Effect, a term the Las Vegas Review-Journal used when it looked back on the win ten years later. Moneymaker has described the appeal himself: in his 2018 ESPN interview he said many people still think of him as a lucky amateur, and that they relate to him for exactly that reason. “They feel that if I can do it, they can do it,” he said. He added that the image even helps him at the table, because opponents assume he bluffs often.

The Other Side of the Poker Boom

The story behind the fairy tale was less glamorous. ESPN reported in 2018 that by the start of the 2005 World Series, Moneymaker had nothing left of the $2.5 million he won in 2003. He gradually rebuilt through endorsement deals and public appearances, according to the same report, but the episode is a reminder that a single huge score is not the same as lasting wealth, and that poker results swing in both directions.

The wider odds deserve the same honesty. In 2003, 838 entrants did not win, and in every satellite only the top finishers earn seats, so most players who chased the dream left with nothing. Wins like this one are the rare exception, not a plan, and the legal age and legality of real-money poker vary by state and venue.

The boom’s growth also hit a wall. On October 13, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), attached to the SAFE Port Act, and PartyPoker and 888 said they would stop allowing U.S. real-money players, according to Card Player. PokerNews reported that PokerStars kept serving the U.S. market and soon passed PartyPoker in player volume. The next Main Event, in 2007, drew 6,358 players, and the 2006 record stood until 2023, when the field reached 10,043 entries.

Common Myths About Moneymaker and the Boom

Myth: he turned $39 into $2.5 million. That was the standard version for years, repeated by Moneymaker himself and in the title of his own book, which cites $40. According to ESPN’s 2018 account, PokerStars’ research showed his path began with an $86 satellite that led to a $650 one. Accounts still differ on the second stage: a Card Player recap of 2003 describes a $600 satellite.

Myth: Moneymaker created the boom on his own. ESPN attributes his overnight fame to a combination of online poker’s rapid growth and the first ESPN broadcasts showing hole cards. A Card Player columnist has argued that his win accelerated a boom already under way rather than starting it.

Myth: he was a one-time winner. Moneymaker finished second at the 2004 WPT Shooting Star for $200,000, according to PokerNews, and was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2019 alongside David Oppenheim.

Related Stories on FeltTales

The 2003 win is the first chapter of a run of Main Events that each tell part of the boom’s story. Joe Hachem’s 2005 title came midway through the growth, and its decisive moment is retold in the final hand of the 2005 WSOP. To see where Moneymaker played his championship, read about Binion’s Horseshoe, the original home of the WSOP. For a story from six years earlier, read about Stu Ungar’s 1997 WSOP comeback.

Sources & References

• ESPN — Life and legacy of Chris Moneymaker, 15 years after his WSOP main event win changed poker forever
• Las Vegas Review-Journal — Chris Moneymaker, 2003 WSOP Main Event champion
• Las Vegas Review-Journal — The Moneymaker Effect, ten years later
• Card Player — History of Poker
• Card Player — Happy 10th Anniversary, Mr. Moneymaker
• PokerNews — A Look Back at the WSOP Main Events
• PokerNews — 2007 WSOP Main Event: official entrant numbers since 2000
• Card Player — Online Poker Shoots and Scores With World Series of Poker Entries
• Card Player — Column on Moneymaker’s win and online poker growth
• Card Player — WSOP: History — 2003 Recap
• Card Player — Bush signs online gambling legislation (UIGEA)
• PokerNews — The Year in Poker: October, 2006
• Card Player — Largest World Series of Poker Main Event In History Smashes Record With 10,043 Entries
• PokerNews — Chris Moneymaker and David Oppenheim Inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame
• PokerNews — Chris Moneymaker player profile