Chris Moneymaker

Chris Moneymaker plays at PokerStars. His nickname is Money and his online screen name is Money800.

Chris Moneymaker is credited with starting a poker boom by winning a major tournament after entering it as an amateur. He gave hope to all amateurs that they too could make money at poker.

Moneymaker was born in Georgia in November 1975. He was of German origin and his last name was actually Nurmacher. Moneymaker, an approximate translation of Nurmacher, has stuck as his last name.

In his childhood Moneymaker played bridge with his grandmother and later blackjack with his father. He then saw the movie Rounders and got interested in Texas Hold ‘Em, an interest that he fulfilled on PokerStars.

After getting a master’s degree, Moneymaker began to work as an accountant. In 2003 he won a US$39 satellite tournament at the PokerStars online poker room and got an entry to the $10,000 buy-in main event of the 2003 WSOP in Las Vegas. This was his first live poker tournament but he was not nervous. On the third day when on one of the televised tables he was playing with his hero Johnny Chan. He won the table and reached the final table for a heads-up match with Sammy Farha. He beat Farha and won the first prize of $2.5 million. This win gave him immediate celebrity status. Moneymaker then quit his accountant’s job and became the celebrity spokesman for Harrah's Entertainment and PokerStars. He also began to play poker professionally. His best performance has been at the Shooting Stars event on the World Poker Tour, where he came second and earned $200,000.

Moneymaker has penned his experiences of his first tournament in his autobiography, Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker, which was published in March 2005. He also speaks on Thursdays on Playboy Radio's Morning Show on Sirius Satellite Radio.

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Easypokerbonuses.com 2008-02-29