Nov. 08, 2003

The hoopla in late May of 2003 and for at least a month thereafter was uncanny. Not only had a rank amateur plowed his way through 892 poker players to snag the game's most prestigious title, but also, he managed to get to the event without a backer and without setting foot in a poker room! To top it off, while devastating the largest field of entrants ever with his unorthodox play, he was heading toward the biggest purse in poker history.

Chris Moneymaker didn't earn just his name at the World Series of Poker, he earned the right to state emphatically that even the huge number of professional and semiprofessional and extremely experienced players looking to get that $2 million first-place prize can be beaten.

Not since Hal Fowler moseyed to Vegas from Southern California in 1979 to take aim at 56 players (mostly professionals) and the $270,000 grand prize had an amateur poker player ever garnered so much media coverage.

The anomaly seems to raise a question of dichotomy. (Poker is a game of skill with expertise acquired through the long and arduous school of experience. Right? That's why you see the same names appear at the top of the winner's list all the time.)

But there is no contradiction.

First of all, tournament poker isn't really poker anymore than tournament golf is golf. When you're restricted by timed limits and increased betting limits and chips, when you're forced to play at monetary levels you'd never dream of playing in a local casino, at home, or on the Internet, you're not playing poker you're taking a shot. When you can't take your winnings and cash out, you're not playing poker you're taking a shot.

Second, the reason the same players seem to win is just a case of selective memory. It seems (and seems is the operative word here) that way because these same people enter tournament after tournament after tournament. Before the advent of online poker, a regular (but not professional) poker player from Kentucky might enter a big tournament in Mississippi. But she'd be playing against all those same pros who traveled to Mississippi specifically to play in the event. Next week they might be in Connecticut but the gal from Paducah isn't going there. And it's a pretty good bet she won't be showing up for the Winter Poker Championships in Dundee (Scotland) November 18th.

Third, we can return to the first example and look at the smaller buy-in events held at poker tables around the country. You don't see the Hellmuths and Brunsons and Lederers winning the weekly events at Sam's Town or Morongo.

In the past, when you did the math, you (the ordinary Joe) didn't really stand much of a chance at big money. Hal Fowler's win was considered a fluke. Even today some people think Chris Moneymaker's win was a fluke. I beg to differ. Today, if you do the math you'll see that many more players have many more options to get into big competitions, particularly the World Series of Poker. If online poker rooms make a habit of offering satellites at a cheap (or even free) rate, more and more amateurs are going to show up in the winner's circle. And if they begin to extend their offerings to the World Poker Tour, the L.A. Poker Classic, the World Poker Open and other major events, then more events are going to have more winners who aren't professional poker players.

That might not make the pros happy but it should and it will. Eventually all these winners will become regular competitors, either in live action or in tournament play and that's good for poker and for the bankrolls of the players who are one step ahead of the newcomers.