The 2003 Poker Boom explained: The Moneymaker Effect

In this series I’m going to try to outline the major forces that came together to produce the 2003 “Poker Boom” and why these forces will likely never be repeated again. In my opinion there were actually five factors that had a hand in creating the Poker Boom:

• Chris Moneymaker
• Positively Fifth Street
• Rounders (poker is a skill game)
• Online Poker
• The Hole Card Camera

It’s really hard to factor the importance of each in the grand scheme of things, since they all essentially played off of one another. So in this series I’ll take a look at each factor individually and explain its role in the 2003 Poker Boom and how it meshed with the other aspects of the Poker Boom.

Chris Moneymaker

The story that Chris Moneymaker took to the final table of the World Series of poker Main Event in 2003 was enthralling, and like a Yankees vs. Red Sox Game 7, the teams, or in the case of poker the players, sometimes have as much to do with the drama than the event itself.

I’m not really sure how the poker boom would have played out had Sammy Farha beaten Moneymaker in that heads-up match, or had Moneymaker been eliminated in 8^th place, or even by earlier in the tournament. I’m sure the Poker Boom still would have happened, but precisely what kind of people were attracted to the game could have been monumentally different.

The one thing that is for certain is Chris Moneymaker gave EVERYONE hope that they could win millions of dollars playing poker. After his win was seen by millions of people on ESPN everyone from college and high school kids to grandmas and grandpas were smitten with the game.

Moneymaker and Positively Fifth Street

Moneymaker’s win also came on the heels of another improbable, and well documented, WSOP run by James McManus in 2000. McManus’s account of his run turned into a best-selling book, and along with Moneymaker the idea that ANYONE could win was cemented.

Moneymaker and Rounders

In addition to winning an online satellite another important part of Chris Moneymaker’s fairy-tale story was that the Movie Rounders got him interested in poker.

Moneymaker and online poker

This idea that everyone could be a poker champion needed an outlet, and online poker gave these players the outlet they needed. Casinos have never been a hospitable place for new poker players, with stakes starting at $2/$4 Limit and $1/$2 No Limit, learning poker in a casino can be an expensive undertaking, but online the game could be played for pocket change.

Moneymaker and the hole-card camera

The fact that Moneymaker had turned a $39 online satellite win into a WSOP Championship led more people to the online poker tables than anything imaginable.

Moneymaker also had the distinct good fortune to play in the first WSOP tournament which used the new hole-card technology, without this new technology it’s hard to imagine that he would have been anything but Robert Varkonyi.