button in SafariChris Moneymaker Crushes High-Stakes Poker Livestream Two Days in a Row
Chris Moneymaker partied like it was 2003 during the two-day No Gamble, No Future livestream on PokerGO.
The Poker Hall of Famer ran hot and proved he can still crush a tough lineup 23 years after winning the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. There was no shortage of action Saturday or Sunday, not with lineups that included Shaun Deeb, Phil Hellmuth, Erick Lindgren, Tom Dwan, Jared Bleznick, and Alan Keating.
None of those great poker players, however, could compete with the man largely responsible for the poker boom more than two decades ago. The world champ was so dominant that commentator Nick Wright dubbed Sunday's livestream as "The Chris Moneymaker Show."
The Chris Moneymaker Show
Moneymaker won $75,400 on Saturday in the $100/$200 no-limit hold'em cash game. He wasn't the biggest winner — Lindgren won $113,600 and Dwan profited $98,800. But the 2003 Main Event winner came back on Sunday and crushed the game once again, although he ran into a rough patch following a hot start.
Most of the big pots he played went his way. In one of those hands, he called a four-bet all-in shove preflop with A♥Q♣ against Bleznick's A♣10♣ for a $76,000 pot. The board ran out 6♣4♣7♦2♦Q♦, a teaser for Bleznick with the flush draw on the flop, but bricks on the turn and river.
Moneymaker's dominance, however, took a nosedive. At one point during the second day of play, he was up nearly $150,000. But the heater began to fade, and his profits had dipped down to under $70,000 for the session. He'd bounce back and win a couple of late small pots to end the game up $74,400, nearly the exact same results he produced a day earlier. That put him at a $149,800 profit for the weekend on No Gamble, No Future.
Hellmuth, on the other hand, played tight, leading to Wright, making his NGNF commentary debut, to repeatedly rip the "Poker Brat's" play. But the 17-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner earned a late double-up against Lindgren to finish the session in the black, albeit with only a $2,600 profit. He won $14,400 over two days despite rarely raising preflop, a constant criticism of Wright.
Wright trashed Hellmuth for raising preflop in only 6% of the hands. So, the Fox Sports talk show host decided to leave the booth during the middle of Saturday's livestream to enter the game, where he proceeded to lose $17,100.
Hellmuth lost his initial buy-in and then raised the $200 big blind with Jx6x to $10,000 the first hand after rebuying into the game. Moneymaker woke up with pocket jacks in the small blind and took down the pot without any further resistance. Keating, who only played on Saturday, was the biggest overall loser, dropping $197,300 in just five hours of play. But he did pull off an epic bluff against Dwan with queen-high against top pair.
Deeb was the only player to have lost both sessions. The reigning WSOP Player of the Year lost $85,200 on Saturday, and another $13,700 on Sunday. But when he arrived for the Sunday game, he informed the table he broke even for the day from wins in a separate post-livestream cash game that ran into the early hours of the morning.
