By trade, Chris Moneymaker had a way with numbers. At his leisure, he also had a penchant for card games.
As an accountant, his last name would always draw the hopes that his skills would validate a profit or help someone break even instead of ending up in the red. Yet, when he would play casino games such as blackjack or craps, Moneymaker found that while it was an entertaining endeavor, it wasn’t a very profitable one.
On one casino outing, he noticed a back room filled with older men who were deep in poker games yet, as he described it, “they didn’t necessarily look happy.”
Still, Moneymaker began playing poker among his friends and, when he brought himself into a poker room, he learned that the game didn’t just involve cards. He discovered he was comfortable with the people around him and in that back-room environment, and the psychological and interpersonal aspect of the game appealed to him.
Winning a few more bucks didn’t hurt, either.
Moneymaker qualified for the 2003 World Series of Poker by winning two online satellite tournaments, an initial entry that he considered an afterthought. A few months later, he won the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, and many point to his victory — and his mirrored sunglasses and baseball cap he wore at the table — as the start of the mainstream boom of professional poker.
Moneymaker will be at Hollywood Casino Toledo next week as part of the Hollywood Poker Open, which began Thursday and runs through Feb. 16. Moneymaker is an ambassador for the event, which is hosted by seven Hollywood Casino properties. Each tournament will award more than 200 seats to the Hollywood Poker Open championship in June in Las Vegas.
“What we noticed last season was that every stop continued to grow,” said Moneymaker, who joined the Hollywood Poker Open last year and is a participant in the regional events. “And we still continued to see more of the same faces. What’s cool about the HPO is that it’s a recognized tournament but it’s spread out enough that you know they get new people but still see some of the same ones. In Tunica [Miss.], I see a lot of the people I know, and St. Louis, as well.
“You don’t get that in a lot of regional poker tours. They’re either so big and so established or they’re so spread out that you don’t get to see a lot of the same people.”
Yet, after he initially became poker’s world champion and earned $2.5 million in 2003, Moneymaker kept his day job.
“I came back to work the Monday after I won,” Moneymaker recalled. “I had all intentions of keeping my job. But then I won my second event and figured, hey, I might be able to make a living out of this.”
Moneymaker, 39, quit the accounting trade in 2004 and devoted himself to poker, whether it was playing in tournaments or helping to promote competitive poker.
As for his appropriate surname? He’s the descendant of German immigrants, coinmakers who modified their last name from “Nurmacher.”
“It’s so weird that it’s my last name,” Moneymaker said. “When I was an accountant, people thought it was fitting. When I was an internal auditor, people saw it and really got a kick out of it. I’d have to say I was very fortunate to be born with the name.”
Luck and skill didn’t hurt Moneymaker’s prospects as a professional poker player either.
“One of the myths about poker is that there’s a lot of luck, that anyone can do it,” said Moneymaker, who lives in Memphis with his wife and three children. “Luck does play a part of it, short-term, but there’s math and psychology, and there’s a lot of skill in the game.”
Contact Rachel Lenzi at: rlenzi@theblade.com, 419-724-6510, or on Twitter @RLenziBlade.
First Published February 6, 2015, 5:09 a.m.