I was watching the 2003 WSOP and I honestly don't see why everyone always puts down Moneymaker. He really played well throughout the majority of the tournament. He's obviously not as good as Hachem or Raymer but everybody talks as if he's a complete fluke. I saw him make a pretty fantastic call against Dutch Boyd and the majority of hands he entered where he was behind, and sucked out were extremely tiny pots in relatioan to his chip stck. I don't know how well he has played since then but in that tournament he played almost perfectly (at least from what the ESPN broadcast showed)

In addition, I thought the interviews they showed him giving were far more humble then Gold, Raymer, and even Hachem. He admitted that he was an amatuer and that he was surprised to get past day 1. He seemed pretty likable. I don't get what everyone seems to have against him.

i think anybody who wins the main event is a good player. I think most people think he was a fluke becuase he hasn't done much since his win.

I think people criticise Moneymake for a number of reasons. I disagree with those people who say that winning the main event was a fluke. However the reason I don't think he has won anything else is because he hasn't played as well as he did in 2003 wsop, from what I have seen the WSOP was his peak and he hasn't got anywhere near that form within the last 3 years.

If you read his book, you'll see that he was a loosing player at low stakes before the WSOP. I've heard more than once from people who have played with or dealt to him after he became famous that he was spewing money in cash games.

I think he played mostly OK in the tournament.

even so, if he lost at low stakes events, that was a long time ago before he made 2.5 million

It isn't that Moneymaker is bad, it's just as an ME champ he is grouped with the likes of Doyle, Stu, Mortenson, Ferguson, Varkoni, Chan, etc.



It's such an exclusive club that even the great look just so so.

I guess that's why Varkoni looks so so...

No, not really.

In 2001:
He lost his job after 9/11, and he starts making some money and withdrawals. The he gets another job for $32k/year. (I mention this amount because it's relevant to his win size.)

In 2003:


There are tons of players on this board who are better players than Moneymaker.

I don't think Moneymaker is bad by any means. He has gotten some really bad beats when hes has played. He does have a 2nd on the WPT. He is not an elite player but I think hes pretty good.

on the circuit, raymer said that if you win a tournament every five years, you are good because of the field size. so moneymaker has a couple of years to still prove his worth, but i think he isn't bad. he said he only plays about 7 tournies a year but he will play a lot in 2007

Doing well in one tournament isn't going to turn any player into a consistent winner if they were losing before.

but i was a losing player also before i learned and won. chris is now a lot better.

i'm curious to see how he does in poker after dark

Basically I think Moneymaker takes a lot of flack because he hasn't had the game/focus (whatever the reason) to make it on the professional circuit since his win. Given that the ME is a little bit of a crap shoot (Jamie Gold... wut?) with so many races given the blind structure and the sheer size of the pool of entrants. That said obviously you've got to be an extremely solid player but I think the top pros will look down on Moneymaker because he doesn't appear to have the ability to play poker professionally as well since then. Maybe it's a fluke cuz now he's rich and he doesn't care. Maybe he just doesn't have the right style of play to win consistently I don't know. But I think the only criticism I really see is from proven pros (and then the lil dogs who repeat whatever they say).

HAHAHAHA Varkonyi...oh wait, were you serious? I think he might be the worst out of all the recent World Series winners. I've been watching Moneymaker on Poker After Dark this week, and he's actually been playing pretty good. Of course, I could just be saying that because he has a total donkey (Gold) to his left, so anyone looks good compared to him. Also, don't forget Moneymaker did make a WPT final table. Here's my ranking of the last 5 WSOP champs, from best to worst:

1) Hachem
2) Raymer
3) Moneymaker
4) Gold
5) Varkonyi

I'll give moneymaker props for one thing, that move he pulled on Ferguson on PAD when he had 4-5 and the board was Q-Q-10.
Ferguson check-raises and moneymaker re-raise bluffs him. Plus it's not like he was just out of line all night re-raising with nothing, it really did seem like a good read, kudos to him.

Im rooting for him to win PAD this week.
I dont think he's a great player but I like the guy. No hate there. I hope he does well. On the other hand he's got a buffoon with a dish of blueberries sitting next to him. Seriously, what is that guy's problem?

I would like to see him win also. That wouild get him some nice respect.

I would like to see him win also. That wouild get him some nice respect.

i would like to see jamie gold chock on those blueberries. i've never seen a player take such a long time to make decisions while holding absoulte trash hands like pocket sixes.

i can't remember the exact hand, but he may have just been taking a long time to set them up for later. make them think he plays a lot and has the skill to make a laydown

I think that the biggest reason that most people claim that Moneymaker sucks is jealousy. I read his book and it's true that he wasn't exactly a great player and possibly not even a very good one in his time leading up to qualifying for the WSOP. However, from what ESPN showed I thought he played pretty well at the ME, he finished 2nd on the WPT and played pretty well on TV in that event, except for maybe the final hand. I feel he probably could have gotten away from his two Jacks there. He really never caught any good luck in either of the Poker Superstars Events that he played and you really do need to get cards and have them hold up in those.

I think he's playing very well on Poker after Dark this week and I really hope that he wins. He may not be as good as some of the previous ME champions, but I do think that the man is capable of playing some very good NLHE and I have to give him props for that. There may be FCPers who are better players than him, but I believe that he's far from being a donkey.

he has made a couple of good plays. he reraised johnny chan when he had pocket sevens with two over cards on the board. It seems like a simple play but he played it well

Did you see that bluff magazine is predicting that 2007 is the year that Chris Moneymaker wins another tournament? They are calling him the John Daly of poker.


and for the record, Robert Varkoni is twice the poker player I am.

It looked like Doyle wasn't to happy about it either.

I was watching this episode of PAD earlier and I could not get over Jamie Gold! The absolute arrogance of the guy is amazing.....I actually jumped up and cheered when he went out! I was reminded of the blog where DN was talking about all of Gold's tells; it was ridiculous....Moneymaker was playing like a seasoned pro compared to Gold.

moneymaker played well. he check raised a couple of times on a bluff and it worked

I think it all goes back to him sucking out Phil Ivey when Phil Ivey was in a serious groove that year. Plus the rookie internet player mystique coupled with just common main-event winner dissing.
He doesn't seem nearly as bad as people make him out to be unlike Gold who looks out of his league on every table he plays.

Either way anybody who plays poker or watches poker owes him a debt of gratitude. He made celebrities out of card players.

true-but i have said this many times, you can't jude gold to quickly.

almost everybody hates moneymaker and you just said that it isn't fair, but you are doing it to gold

Right On!

The difference between Moneymaker and Gold is that Moneymake is actually a good guy.

Gold is an arrogant dink.

like i said before, just because ESPN made him seem like a dic k, that doesn't make him one. and even if he was a dic k he was playing for 12 million dollars and there must have been a ton of pressure

Well, I'll go out on a limb to disagree with a lot of the posts and say, a lot of people think Moneymaker sucks because he does. I'm sorry, but he didn't play all that well in the 2003 ME. He got LUCKY and sucked out a lot of times when he made a bad call.

It's like watching episodes of "Rob and Amber Against all odds." Rob is the same way. He makes it to heads up at the PokerDome because he was an idiot who put his money in with 99 against QQ and then sucked out a 9. Like Moneymaker in 03, Rob is more lucky than good.

Moneymaker may be a better player NOW....but when I watch the ME from 2003 I just see one lucky mother sucker. Period.

Okay, discuss. Prove me wrong. What have ya.....