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Chris Moneymaker Wins Two Events in Florida

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Chris Moneymaker isn’t exactly a top-tier poker pro these days, but his story still inspires poker players around the world and PokerStars has taken advantage of that fact with their Moneymaker Tour. To his credit, Moneymaker has been taking the game seriously and has had numerous deep runs in recent events.

Most recently, Moneymaker took down one of his events and followed that up with a win at the Seminole Rock N Roll Poker Open. These wins are capping what’s been a very successful year for Moneymaker at the tables.

Moneymaker Wins Two Events in Florida

It’s not often we hear Chris Moneymaker taking down events, so it was doubly surprising when we found out that he won two events in the course of a week, and nearly won a third. He started his run in a Moneymaker Tour event at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, FL. He got heads-up int he event against Andres Risquez.

Risquez was freerolling once he got to heads-up play because he was guaranteed a $30,000 Platinum Pass from PokerStars for the PokerStars Players Championship in January. The pass was supposed to go to the winner, but Moneymaker was ineligible, so Risquez had that prize locked up. He went on to defeat Moneymaker heads-up and take the $14,000 top prize. Moneymaker won $8,135.

A few days after his near-miss, Moneymaker took down the Feeding South Florida Charity Event on Tuesday. This event also awarded a Platinum Pass along with an entry into the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event and a four-night stay at the casino.

Moneymaker made it heads-up with Estaban Garcia and because he was ineligible to win the pass, Garcia will get the freeroll in January. Moneymaker ended up taking down the tournament to win $3,000, the SHRPO entry, and the free stay at the casino.

Moneymaker was not done as he then won his second event in two days during the Seminole Rock N Roll Poker. He won the $360 Omaha Hi-Lo Event, knocking out Perry Klein heads-up for the title and $9,136. This was Moneymaker’s first win since August 2017.

Moneymaker Having Success in Small Buy-in Events

Chris Moneymaker is best known for his victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, the win that helped launch the Poker Boom. Since that time, Moneymaker has only earned six-figure in a year twice with 2011 being the last time he won more than $100k in a year.

Moneymaker sticks with primarily lower buy-in events and takes his job as a PokerStars ambassador seriously. Earlier this year, PokerStars launched the Moneymaker Tour, a series of $86 buy-in events that featured Moneymaker as a player and gives players a shot at winning a Platinum Pass.

Since it’s launch, Moneymaker has cashed in six of his tour events, making the final table twice and both times finishing runner-up. For the year, Moneymaker has seven final tables including the charity event earlier this week. While his overall earnings are less than $50k on the year, it still shows that he has the ability to compete in the game.

Moneymaker has attributed his success to a couple of things. The first is that he is working on his game now more than he has in past years. The other is that the Moneymaker Tour events have been fun events where players are there more to have fun and play poker than worry about “grinding.”

One thing’s for certain, there are a lot of players out there that are getting an experience of a lifetime playing with a former Main Event champion, and multiple players are earning an experience of a lifetime with Platinum Passes to the PSPC in January.

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