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Living up to his name, Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, turned a $40 entry fee in an Internet poker tournament into $2.5 million and the game's most prestigious title, winning the 34th annual World Series of Poker's No Limit Texas Hold'em event..
Moneymaker, 27, won his place at Binion's Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas through a pair of satellite tournaments on www.pokerstars.com, one of several Web sites where he has been gambling for about three years. Moneymaker beat 13 previous world champions in a field of 839, a high that was up a third from last year's 631. The overall purse was $7,802,700, divided among the top 63 finishers..
Moneymaker entered Friday's fifth and final day of competition with $2.3 million in chips, the most among the nine survivors. By about 2 a.m. Saturday, it was just him and Sam Farha, who won a smaller World Series event in 1996..
In Texas Hold'em, each player gets two cards face down and then has a chance to bet before three shared cards known as the flop are turned face up on the table, prompting another round of betting. Two more shared cards are exposed, one at a time, with betting in between, and the player who makes the best five-card hand from the seven available cards wins the pot..
Moneymaker won the final hand with a full house (three 5s and two 4s). Farha won $1.3 million for second place..
Moneymaker, 27, won his place at Binion's Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas through a pair of satellite tournaments on www.pokerstars.com, one of several Web sites where he has been gambling for about three years. Moneymaker beat 13 previous world champions in a field of 839, a high that was up a third from last year's 631. The overall purse was $7,802,700, divided among the top 63 finishers..
Moneymaker entered Friday's fifth and final day of competition with $2.3 million in chips, the most among the nine survivors. By about 2 a.m. Saturday, it was just him and Sam Farha, who won a smaller World Series event in 1996..
In Texas Hold'em, each player gets two cards face down and then has a chance to bet before three shared cards known as the flop are turned face up on the table, prompting another round of betting. Two more shared cards are exposed, one at a time, with betting in between, and the player who makes the best five-card hand from the seven available cards wins the pot..
Moneymaker won the final hand with a full house (three 5s and two 4s). Farha won $1.3 million for second place..