Everyone knows Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event and launched the poker boom of the mid 2000s. Chris showed the world that a regular guy who was not a top pro poker player could defeat the best players and win the Main Event. Moneymaker is a legend. But just one year earlier in the 2002 WSOP Main Event another amateur poker player, Robert Varkonyi, did the same thing as Moneymaker. He defeated the top pros and won the Main Event. And nobody really cared. No poker boom was started and almost nobody remembers him.

So why was the Moneymaker win such a catalyst even though Varkonyi did the same thing the previous year?

Because Chris's parents had the last name; moneymaker, this Varkony guy didn't.

Did Varkonyi pay ten grand for attending? Moneymaker satellited himself in. "I could do it" became the mantra. "And make money!"

I will always argue that it wasn't really about Moneymaker so much as it was about online poker, WPT, and ESPN's hole card cam.

442 Productions took over the WSOP brand for the 2003 WSOP and there was a quantum leap in the entertainment value of the product. Just watch the two broadcasts one after another. The difference is night and day. They presented the action in an exciting manner, had slick production design (for the time), made use of poker's many wild characters, and overall just modernized the packaging of poker in a way that we hadn't quite seen. Lon and Norm have built up some critics over time, but what they brought to the product back then was fresh and exciting. Online poker was just becoming prevalent as quality Internet continued to spread throughout the nation, allowing anyone to jump onto PokerStars or PartyPoker and try their luck. It was the perfect storm.

Moneymaker was a great story and he put on a fun performance. He was an ingredient, but I think his role is overstated. It was going to happen either way. If it hadn't been him, it would've been someone like Raymer or Gold. I think it was more down to the context than one man himself.

Keep crushing it and you're gonna be like a top 30 Troll Account

Perfect answer. As someone that fell in love with poker around this time I'd say the hole card cams played a huge role in the difference between 2002 and 2003 coverage plus the higher than usual production value. One could say, cinematic.

And if my memory serves right, WPT got the ball rolling with season 1 and the hole cams a good 6 to 9 months before the WSOP even aired and by the time it did they just knocked it out the park and were lucky enough to have an average Joe blow american dude win the tournament off a 30 dollar satellite on the internet by beating what looked like at the time the quintessential Las Vegas high stakes poker pro in Sammy Farha.

You couldn't have scripted it better. What a beautiful time in history.

And no offense to Varkonyi but he was nowhere near as relatable to Moneymaker. Also, they showed the whole journey from day 1 to the final table which was a brand new concept at the time and gave the viewer a rooting interest that wasn't possible from stumbling upon a table of 9 random dudes while channel surfing.

To put it simply it was the perfect storm.

Moneymaker may have been a bit too good for the game though. Would the UIGEA have happened without him?

100

Yes.

The UIGEA was a blatant protectionist grab.

It was 99% the presence and growing influence of poker being available online. The "perfect storm" was already brewing, but it exploded after 2003.....

I think the die was cast as soon as the WPT started broadcasting, in 2002. As someone with new online poker brand, I'll say without any doubt the HUGE growth from marketing spends on WPT shows cannot be over stated. My company went and bought every Travel Channel ad spot we could, in whatever markets were available; the ROI from week to week and across markets was astoundingly correlated to whether an ad ran on that week's Travel Channel episode.

Whatever % one can ascribe to Chris Moneymaker however as the catalyst for accelerating the overall popularity of the game, should never be underestimated.

Rounders (1998) a live poker tale had planted the seed in the public market and fertilized the ground.

2001 - 2003 were already on an inevitable huge growth trend, the internets poker industry was already on an upward trajectory. Chris provided a great catalyst for a product/service that WAS going to grow. Chris clearly brought what Varonky did not.

Keep in mind, this was BEFORE there was any Facebook (2004), which itself revolutionized marketing online, complementing broadcast television.

(Chris is possibly one of the nicest guys you could ever want to meet, seriously. That comes across in broadcasts VERY well. Jamie Gold has a different, but also very effective personal style that comes across in broadcasts. I've met Jamie, his perona is not the same type of guy as Chris, but Jamie's performance contribute personally quite heavily to the growth of poker online and deserves props in that regard. Similarly, Scotty made a contribution to online poker's growth by force of personality.)

I may be a little hazy re memory from 20+ years ago, but poker WAS show business brought to the online world.

i forgot this reminded me i played with varkoni plo think i beat him in a pot in like 2010 borgata

WPT on the Travel Channel is what introduced me to poker in Spring of 2003.

Thanks for this information.

Sammy Farha, the stereotype of the old-fashioned predatory pro poker player, made a great foil for Chris and together they made one of the most memorable episodes in TV history.

obviously it was the cams, ldo

you must be miserable to live with, lmfao

Correct, it was all the additional coverage of earlier days with hole card cams. Knocked out big guns such as Chan and Ivey.

Dutch Boyd was an interesting character and he crippled him with the big 33 call

Then big bluff vs Farha. Farha deserves credit as well for being a cool cat. Was this also first year of Lon and Norm?

Yes, I'm not the easiest person

Awesome post.

I love it when people say it had nothing to do with a guy named Moneymaker fueling the boom. His name was effing Moneymaker! Of course him winning had an impact lol

Robert seems nice enough but was a pretty dull personality. He didn't have the everyman persona that CMM did.

There was another player in that WSOP ME named Kris Moneyloser, thank god that guy didn't win!

But seriously, I'm in the camp that thinks it was 98% the hole card cam + ESPN's increased production value and 2% Moneymaker. If MM had somehow won in 2002 with that boring ass coverage, no one would have cared. Likewise, no matter who won in 2003, poker was about to explode.

I was more impressed with 2nd place, Julian Gardner. A young brit getting 2nd was amazing to me.