Common consensus seems to be that he inspired a bunch of fish to start playing online but is this really the case?

Most seem to agree that the games are a whole lot tougher now than they ever were.

All he seems to have done was inspired a stack of kids (maybe fish originally but not anymore) to get damn good at online poker to the point where the game is now overrun by solid regs and edges aren't what they used to be.

He might have brought a stack of new players to the game but how is everyone being solid good for poker?

Not being critical here....I wasn't around when times were supposedly good but is it better now just because there are more players or did Moneymaker really unintentionally f**k it up for everyone?

2003 was 7 years ago man, of course people are going to be better over time. still fish though.

We need another Moneymaker effect.

absolutely horrible post/topic. op is clueless

it was a great party, you just got there late

this thread is stupid. lol.

poker is addicting.

a lot of people just got addicted after the moneymaker boom so the fish got addicted and then inevitibly got better over time.

imagine if alcohol was invented (by a guy named BOB) in 2003. everyone would be testing it out. it would attract tons of people. people would get drunk off 4 beers!

now in 2010, those same people would get drunk off 14 beers instead of 4. this is because they get better at drinking.

so how exactly was BOB good for beer drinking?

he made people who were not "pros'' believe they could beat the likes of Phil Ivey and win the ME

His name was moneymaker.

/thread.

something that just popped in my head;

at the time, do you think the actual "pros" thought it'd be bad for poker? do you think they were like, "omg now everyone is gonna think poker is all luck. this is gonna be so bad for the growth of the game."

any actual pros before the boom reading this thread that could answer this question?


btw - if not for the moneymaker boom, there would be no money in poker today. it would be kinda like being a professional fisherman. or a professional billiards player. dried up prize pool = no chance at a career. i mean before the moneymaker boom i think stars had like one daily $100 buyin tournament and first place got like $3000-4000. i think their sunday tournament was a $215 buyin and it was like the sunday 100k gaurantee or something.

something, something, something.

I don't think anyone can argue that Moneymaker wasn't good for the game of poker. The major poker sites have grown exponentially since his win and the overall surge in poker interest has given us things like High Stakes Poker, the EPT, and Full Tilt Poker. The number of poker players and major tournaments has increased dramatically since 2003. From an outsider's perspective and a casual fan's perspective, Moneymaker's win was a good thing for poker.

Whether or not Moneymaker was good for serious poker players is another question entirely. A few people benefited tremendously. Players like Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Gordon, Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and Howard Lederer got a ton of exposure because they were featured in the WPT/WSOP broadcasts right around the time when poker was at its peak popularity. Most casual fans know these players, but have never heard of Faraz Jaka, Daniel Alaei, Jason Mercier, or Yevgeniy Timoshenko. There was a ton of value for being in the right place at the right time. Those guys are made men in poker. Just look at the WSOP ME broadcast. Who do they build episodes around every year? Negreanu, Hellmuth, Ivey, etc. Basically the same guys they've been showing since 2003. Will Jaka, Alaei, Mercier, or Timoshenko be at the featured table on day one this year? Of course not. ESPN will trot out some 2003 TV pro and MAYBE give us a durrrr episode if they're feeling particularly frisky.

A handful of guys hit the jackpot because of the poker boom, but I don't think it helped the average player's bankroll aside from maybe getting him interested in poker in the first place. Today's players have more learning resources at their disposal, which would be a good thing if it weren't for the fact that any clown can read these books and improve his skills. Everyone agrees that the games are harder now. The poker boom caused increased interest in poker, which expanded the market for poker books, which educated the masses and made the games more difficult to beat. Moneymaker played a role in that process, although I think his role was overstated. As I've mentioned before, I think the boom was more about the WPT and the improvements that ESPN made in its WSOP broadcast.

Either way, Moneymaker still looms huge. I think he's one of the top 50 vote getters for the WSOP Tournament of Champions even though his credentials and recent results don't warrant that kind of support.

good post OP

you right.

it was the first year ESPN made a big deal about poker, it really didnt matter who won. ty espn

Poker boom was mostly ESPN's coverage. Moneymaker was good as well, but people actually enjoyed watching it on TV back then and as a result starting playing themselves.

so what your really saying is:

no money making in Moneymakers success, everyone got solid.

what a great last name by the way....and how lucky was it that his last name turns up on the bracelet.

being a late person to the game, ie i started playing three years ago and have found that people are still not that solid, just on the net they are. but then they see heaps of hands and can sit at heaps of tables and the games basically suck. THANKS LIMON

but you know live games are still so full of people that have no idea, dont play on the net and just really do stupid things. including me of course.

i think the issue is that the net takes something to go to. people make a decision to play online after they have confidence in their game mostly. so that means they automatically are going to have some ability above the average joe.

IMO FWIW.

Poker sites and casinos love the crap out of it. We all fight over small edges while they book solid variance-free wins that kick the hell out of any player's winrates.

Rake-free home poker FTW!

This is pretty accurate. Poker was gaining popularity with the masses for 2 reasons, espns coverage with the hole cam and internet poker which was still growing. Poker was going to "boom" regardless, Moneymaker just made for a great story and def had a positive effect. To what degree I have no idea.

Poker would have exploded anyways. It was already rising with the 1st season of the WPT. The Moneymaker story just turned it from a rise into a huge deal.

TBH, Bobby Hoff said it best in HOC. He's never seen so many good players before in his life. He's also never seen so many bad players in his life, either.

exactly. as in anything in life, from any given cross section of the population there will be a percentage of people who are able to excel, a percentage who are average, and a percentage who fail miserably. the moneymaker effect served to exponentially increase the poker population, and while it cant be argued there are many many more excellent players, there are also many many more clueless fish who think poker is all about what they see in donkaments on tv. and rounders.

By the way, on May 31, the guy just won his seat for Main Event in a $33 rebuy sat' (first out of 100 players, winner takes all). Again.

I think World Poker Tour got lots of people interested, they could watch a tournament every Wednesday night. Then Moneymaker came along and showed that a donk really can win millions if they get lucky in the right spot. Now ESPN is dropping the ball with their crappy coverage of only 2 or 3 holdem games. I miss that razz and omaha hi lo

IMO

Regards, Lee

a stack of new players? he pretty much brought everybody that plays right now into the game. how many of us would have started playing if not for the popularity his win brought to the game? I wouldn't have and I'd bet that many of the players (all players, good, bad, and other) would not have ventured into the Pokerz if it wasn't on TV 24 hours a day. we'd all still be playing in our small stakes home games and then hitting the pit when we'd go to Vegas.

that's what he did. would the boom have happened anyway if he didn't win? Probably. Just would have taken a bit longer without his story.

Maybe but sooo many people I knew kept sticking it out because they stubbornly thought they were good enough w/out practicing/studying to beat other people that did and when they didn't it was due to ****ty luck, not their lack of skill. I have 3 buddies to this day that believe this. The random donkament they go deep in confirms this belief for them and everytime they get drunk I gotta sit and listen to it. I have a degen gambling buddy that's down like $25k online but since he plays higher stakes than other buddies of ours he's a better player in their eyes even though a few of us are lifetime winning players that have always stuck to smaller stakes lol. They have no clue about basic things such as bankroll management and think they are as good as anyone. They don't even consider what I say so I don't even try. I'm not sure these types of people would have been so into it if Moneymaker didn't get the notoriety he did.

What you describe is a classic gambler. Gamblers consistently lose money but keep playing for those few times that they win and get a rush from it. For every $1000 they lose, they win $100 but the rush and thrill their brains receive is all that is remembered and it's value is more than the money they lose in between. It's a classic trait of addicts who blank out everything between the "highs" of their lives.

I have similar friends who only have bad beat stories and stories of crushing the table, yet every time I take a trip to a casino with them, they end up losing.

Funny part of it all is that many of these people (my friends included) don't keep track of their loses like they keep track of their wins and truly believe that they are winning players when they are in fact down thousands of dollars in poker.