Chris Moneymaker, an amateur player who qualified for the main event of the WSOP after winning a $39 satellite tournament at Poker Stars, shocked the poker world and took home the bracelet that year, along with $2.5 million. His remarkable run of the tournament, coupled with his status as an online amateur, made his multi-million dollar victory that much more memorable.
The past couple of years have been huge for online poker. Since the amateur Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP main event on www.PokerStars.net, everyone has been chasing a similar dream. Millions of dollars are up for grabs each and every day playing this simple card game. Many people have made poker their number one hobby next to partying and watching professional sports. Why should you play online poker? Online poker is similar to any other game you have played in your life. From video games, sports, snooker, or chess, all the games are similar. All games require an extreme amount of skill and mental endurance. The challenge of defeating an opponent is reason enough to become better at poker.
Every day you sit down to play poker, there is something new to learn. Similar to golf, the player who makes the least number of mistakes will win in the long run. Poker is very similar to video games out on the market. At the beginning stages of poker, your opponents will be very weak. As you progress through the ranks, you will meet tougher opponents. Playing tougher opponents will force you to become better if you want to continue playing. If you lose all your money at the higher limit, you have to start all over at the first level. There is a reason why online poker is so popular in our society. We have been playing video games, sports, and competing our entire lives. It is in our blood to want to complete against our fellow neighbor. Online poker has been established, are you ready to do battle?
The next and probably most important contribution to the history of tournament poker is the introduction of the “satellite” tournament. While Eric Drache was running the World Series of Poker for the Binion family in the 1970s, he noticed a number of players in side games who did not appear willing or able to put up $10,000 for the main event, playing in a game where there was $10,000 on the table among them. Drache suggested they play a freeze-out for the whole thing, with the winner playing in the main event. Thus the satellite tournament was born. In a poker satellite tournament, a group of players put up a certain amount, about ten percent of the entry fee to a larger tournament and play a freeze-out, with the winner then having the money to play in the larger tournament.
Players can also try super-satellites, multiple table tournaments which pay one seat for every ten players, or however many players it takes to make up one entry fee. (e.g. in a $200 super satellite for a $10,000 tournament, the tournament organizers would award one seat to the main event for every 50 players; $200 multiplied by 50 players equals $10,000). This system allows ordinary people, who may not have $10,000 to risk on a poker tournament, a chance to take a shot at the pros for a reasonable price. Chris Moneymaker, the 2003 World Series Champion, won his buy-in through online satellites starting with only $40.
Moneymaker’s feat brings us to the final factors contributing to the growth of tournaments; online poker and televised poker. For most of poker’s history, televised poker was very difficult to watch. Since there was no way to know what cards each player held, viewers could not speculate on the play of those at the table and lost interest quickly. With the advent of hole-card cameras and other technology which showed viewers exactly what cards each player held, televised poker became a phenomenon, just in time for Chris Moneymaker to complete an improbable run to victory at the World Series, taking advantage of online poker satellites, another relatively new innovation allowing anyone, anywhere in the world an opportunity to win a seat in a big poker tournament. Chris’s win showed that not only could anyone win a seat at the World Championship, anyone could actually win the tournament and the rest is history.
