News: "Sometimes it's like 2003 was just yesterday"

10 years after his poker-changing WSOP Main Event win, we sat down with him to talk about the evolution of the game and online poker.

Chris Moneymaker's historic
WSOP Main Event win in 2003.

PokerStrategy.com: Hey Chris, thanks for joining us – did you just fly in from the US?

Chris Moneymaker: From Montreal, actually.

PokerStrategy.com: Jetlagged much?

Chris Moneymaker: I slept for 18 hours last night [laughs]. I purposely stayed up and watched movies the whole night before so I could sleep.

I learned after going to Macau that I have to be real strategic about my sleep patterns; in Macau I'll never forget – I was sitting on Facebook and the tournament was starting in three hours but I hadn't slept in two days. I was thinking “please somebody kill me” with seven hours of the tournament ahead.

I can't do that again, I have to make sure that when I go somewhere I plan ahead – I came to London a day early, a day before the tournament, just so I could sleep.

PokerStrategy.com: Well you seem alert enough. I imagine that's been your life since 2003 – does it feel like it's been 10 years since you won the Main Event; way more, way less?

Chris Moneymaker: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes it seems like it was just yesterday, and sometimes I wake up and I can tell my body's 10 years older.

PokerStrategy.com: You probably do more media stuff than anyone on the PokerStars team except for Daniel [Negreanu] and Liv [Boeree] – what's the most common question you get asked (we'll try and avoid that one)?

Chris Moneymaker: Erm, that's tough. It used to be about my last name, but that's died off now... I don't know. There's actually so many random questions now, it's difficult to say. I guess I've heard them all. A lot of people talk about the 10-year thing this year of course.

"Media has always been part of the game... I approach poker like a business rather than a hobby"

Moneymaker PokerStrategy.com: Do you find the constant media stuff distracting?

Chris Moneymaker: No, it's always been a part of the game for me. I started playing 18 months before I won the Main Event, after I won it was just something I got used to.

For example, I know that today is just going to be interviews and that's just something I do. I try to approach this kind of thing, which I didn't do even two years ago, is to approach live tournaments as a business rather than a hobby or a game. So I know today I have to do interviews, tomorrow I play poker, etc.

Before I'd probably just get drunk, show up hungover, whatever.

PokerStrategy.com: I think that's what I'd do if I won the Main Event.

Chris Moneymaker: Yeah it's cool, it's fun for a while but when you're 37 years old and you have 3 kids at home you have to grow up at some point.

PokerStrategy.com: Have you read Dusty "leatherass9" Schmidt's book on that subject?

Chris Moneymaker: I haven't, no – I did read JonathanLittle's book, which is the same concept. He talks about approaching it sensibly, exercising – that's one thing that has changed so much in the game. When I won, your average player was 50 years old, overweight, there was no such thing as health-consciousness at the poker table.

Now you look around and the top players are all these young guys in great shape, eating right, dieting, with trainers; the game has obviously evolved in so many different fashions. That's a change that got my attention – it makes sense, playing all these long days you have to be really sharp at the end of it. That was my biggest weakness for a long time, and it still probably is a little bit.

PokerStrategy.com: There is a definite correlation between physical fitness and mental sharpness.

Chris Moneymaker: Yeah, I used to get fatigued at the end of tournament days a lot of the time. It was pretty bad that every time I busted a tournament, it was at night. I could sit there playing online for eighteen hours but playing live is just so slow and you have to focus all the time.

Online, with a HUD, it's just "click click click" but live you need to focus on everything and I think it taxes your system a lot – as well as the sheer boredom of playing one hand every ten minutes. Especially in today's game where it's taking guys five minutes to make a fold.

"I blamed my non-success on bad luck but to be honest I wasn't up with the game"

Chris on US online poker

The return of online poker depends on the money generated from the first few states.

People always said there's too much money to be made for them not to legalise it, but look at sports betting – there's more money to be made there than there ever will be in poker, and they haven't legalised that.

I'm fearful that since there hasn't been a federal bill passed yet, we won't get one. We certainly won't while Obama's in office, and I thought he would be the President to do it.

It's going to take a guy like Barton who really loves poker and has a passion about getting the bill passed, but nothing's going to happen immediately – they have enough problems, they can't even balance their own freaking budget; we're shut down right now!

Online poker, unfortunately, isn't a priority for a while. People don't realise that if it ever does get passed, you'll have to wait years to get the regulations in place – New Jersey's had online poker for over a year and the first hand won't be dealt until November. Governments work slow.

PokerStrategy.com: Do you find being poker's ambassador annoying or overly pressurising; ever wish you could just play the game?

Chris Moneymaker: Nah, I like the pressure, it never bothers me.

I put pressure on myself, my biggest pressure came in the years following as the game changed so much. I got complacent, I didn't keep up with the game – I probably didn't even start studying the game until like 2006/7 and I was so far behind the times at that point.

I blamed my non-success on bad luck, but to be honest I just wasn't up with the game of that day. If you're going to play this game, you have to keep up with the trends. When online poker left the US, it became even more difficult to keep up.

PokerStrategy.com: Obviously 10 years ago you were the online player – at that time there was a lot of vilification of online players, now it seems to have come full circle. What camp do you fall in – do you still consider yourself an online player at heart?

Chris Moneymaker: No, I mean, I'm both; I play both pretty comfortably. I think I have the fundamentals of an online player, and the mentality of an online player; also I have a lot of the skill-set you need to be a live player.

I think if you're playing at the level of £5,000 buy-in tournaments there's not much differentiating between the two, you can play both.

PokerStrategy.com: Do you still play online whenever you're not in the US?

Chris Moneymaker: I can't at home, but whenever I'm on the road I play online. Today I have some TLB matches and I plan on playing the Sunday Million.

"If I didn't have it, I folded; if I did, I continued. That's how I won the Main Event."

The winning hand of the 2003 Main Event

PokerStrategy.com: What other major changes have you seen since 2003? Obviously the industry has changed (arguably because of your win), but how's this affected the game in your eyes?

Chris Moneymaker: As far as the game goes, the aggression and variance in tournament poker has shot up. Back when I won, there was no such thing as 3-betting or 4-betting without the nuts. If someone 4-bet you they had aces or kings, 100% of the time.

The big difference was that back then you had dollar-for-dollar stacks – i.e. in the $10,000 Main Event you got 10,000 chips so there wasn't a ton of room for 3-betting or 4-betting. Also, every raise was 3x, that was standard. So a 3-bet was 9x, and there was none of this clicking it back, the bet sizing has changed so much. You'd never get in a 6-bet in the past, it just never happened.

Hell, back then it was illegal to check-raise in some casinos. In 2003 my strategy was that if people lead into me and I didn't have anything, I folded; if I had something, I continued. If they checked, I would just bet – if they check-raised, they had a monster.

It was the easiest poker in the world; that's how I won the Main Event. Obviously it wouldn't work today [laughs].

PokerStrategy.com: Some would say that's your fault.

Chris Moneymaker: Haha, sorry!

PokerStrategy.com: Good luck with the EPT - will we see you at the WSOPE?

Chris Moneymaker: Afraid not - I've been on the road for a while and haven't been home in a month so I'm heading back there [Ed: note for those who picked him in their Fantasy Five!].

Interview conducted by mjperry | Follow MJPerry on Twitter