A Face In The Crowd
Maybe it just stands to reason that a guy named Chris Moneymaker would, well, make money—and a boatload of it. The real question is why the champion of the recent 34th annual World Series of Poker, whose windfall from the Las Vegas tournament was a cool $2.5 million, is still going to work every day. “Two and half million doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to,” he says. Spoken like a rich accountant, which, by the way, he now is, though he’s still three years shy of 30. Moneymaker is the chief financial officer for a pair of Nashville restaurants, Bound’ry and South Street. A little less than two years ago, he was laid off from his job at Deloitte & Touche, where his work life was a good deal more conservative, preened and just plain starchy. He then landed a job as the money man for the restaurants, where the coffee’s at the bar and cohorts aren’t generally wearing Brooks Brothers apparel. The more permissive culture gave him more of a chance to hone his skills at online poker, which he’d taken to playing at home from time to time. His colleagues, he says, “have been really supportive of me. If I was still at Deloitte, none of this would have ever happened.” What happened was that Moneymaker’s penny-ante games with the buds led him to virtual poker playing. He won two online tournaments, qualifying him to compete back in May in the Vegas tourney. Bottom line: He bested 839 people, some of whom were professional poker players, at a game called “No-Limit Texas Hold ’em.” “I think I got lucky, but you have to be lucky and good,” he says. With the proceeds, Moneymaker paid off his house in Spring Hill, contributed to charity, padded his 6-month-old’s college fund (all she needs now are Ivy League grades) and bought a Land Cruiser for his wife and BMW for himself. But he’s not folding just yet. He still plays online but “at about the same levels that I did before,” he says.
By Liz Murray Garrigan
