Three years ago, Chris Moneymaker was an ordinary schlub like the rest of us, an accountant who pulled down $40,000 a year.
Now, through the magic of television and a good dose of nerve, Moneymaker is a world champion, an international celebrity and hailed as the one who ignited a nation-wide poker frenzy.
Moneymaker shelled out $39 to enter a satellite poker tournament and turned it into a $2.5 million payday when he won the 2003 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
His days in accountancy are long gone. And he has inspired thousands of other no-name amateurs to take up the game. He’s Joe Ordinary who made it big.
Moneymaker, Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth and Greg Raymer are nearly as well known as Curt Schilling, LeBron James and Tom Brady.
Through ESPN and other networks, elite poker players have not only made themselves into household names. They also have boosted their potential earnings to an amount that’s almost insane.
The winner of this year’s tournament, which concludes Saturday, will pocket $7.5 million. Total prize money: $52,818,610.
Raymer, the 2004 winner, earned $5 million last year in this tournament alone.
The 1971 winner, Johnny Moss, won $30,000. To win $30,000 in this year’s tournament, a player merely has to finish between 201st and 230th.
Online poker has felt the boost in the game’s popularity. More and more top players learned the game online, taking advantage of its accessibility. Now, new players are playing many more hands than those before them did when they started out. One online poker web site, PokerStars.com, boasts 37,431 players, 5,850 tables and 1,758 tournaments.
Summer Hatch, director of table games and poker at Tulalip Casino, says poker is the hot game right now, catching up to the ever-popular slot machines. The casino offers a variety of poker, such as Texas Hold ‘Em, Stud, Omaha, Crazy Pineapple and others.
Hatch said the old Tulalip Casino had six tables. When the new facility was built, management had no way to forecast how popular the game would be and thought 10 tables would suffice.
Wrong.
“It was just packed all the time,” Hatch said. ” … We added an additional 10 tables and doubled the size of our cage. Each table has nine or 10 seats. Lately, we’ve had about 200 entrants in our major tournaments.”
Now, Hatch said, the casino attracts 25 to 50 players for its morning tournaments that run Mondays through Fridays. Each Sunday, the casino adds $1,000 in winnings in a tournament that attracts about 85. On the last Sunday of each month, the casino puts on a tournament that draws about 80. Those are but a few tournaments it puts on.
Last month, Tulalip sent five players to the World Series of Poker. The winner received a buy-in to the WSOP of $10,000, along with $2,000 cash for the hotel stay.
Who knows? They may already have met Chris Moneymaker. And beat him.
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Word out of New York is that the Knicks and free-agent center Jerome James have agreed to a five-year, $29 million deal.
Presumably, the Knicks are hot on the Jerome who averaged 17.2 points and 9.4 rebounds a game for the Sonics in the first round of the playoffs against the Kings. And not the Jerome who slept through a film session, never got himself into great playing shape, grabbed a rebound about once every millennium, collected fouls as others collect postage stamps and admitted to an “over-active” social life.
For James’ goodwill, those days had better be behind him. Here’s a guy who complained that then-coach Nate McMillan didn’t respect him and that the Seattle media was unduly harsh on him.
Wait until he gets a load of the New York media, which will make their Seattle counterparts look like Bambi if he slogs through 2005-06. They’ll run him out of town.
Meanwhile, we’d best get used to the idea of Vitaly Potapenko starting at center for the Sonics.
That is, if the free-agent doesn’t sign elsewhere as well.
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As difficult as it is to visualize, Bret Boone played baseball in a Minnesota Twins uniform Friday night, his first game since he was traded by the Mariners for two medicine balls and a batboy to be named.
Boone has said that he still, at 36, can produce at this level if he can get his swing right. While we’re rooting for him because he’s such a class guy, we find it hard to find reason for optimism.
Boone’s numbers and his range have steadily declined since his monster year in 2001, in which he hit .331, with 37 homers and 141 RBI. Still, the Twins are in a no-lose situation. The Mariners are picking up the tab on Boone’s substantial salary. Also, the Twins have tried five second basemen this season. What harm could they do by trying Boone as No. 6?
Although there are those who say a change in scenery can be beneficial, Boone’s situation, unfortunately, may be beyond scenery.
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