Oddly enough, perhaps the Internet’s most famous “big win,” and the one that propelled a new segment of the online gaming industry forward, had nothing to do with slots or progressive jackpots. In fact, it didn’t even involve betting against the house.
In May 2003, a 27-year-old amateur card player, Christopher Bryan Moneymaker, upended poker champion Sam Farha to win the main table of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) at Binion’s Casino in Las Vegas. A novice beating a top professional was interesting news, but two things made this triumph exceptional.
First, the availability and spread of Boss Media’s multiplayer platform for online gambling in 1999 had allowed virtual poker rooms to be established, so that players in remote locations could vie directly against one another in real time. As more and more online casinos set up poker sites, people became more familiar with the game.
An accountant by trade, Moneymaker enjoyed playing poker online in his spare time. Just for fun, he entered a $39 satellite tournament on PokerStars.com and won. That earned him a seat at a larger satellite, which he also won, giving him admission to the WSOP Main Event, where he would face 839 entrants. Each seat there cost $10,000, making it the largest poker tournament ever played in a casino at the time. It was Moneymaker’s first ever live tournament.
Second, ESPN had started televising poker matches on its cable TV sports network in 2002. Being able to see how the pros played on the World Poker Tour and watching celebrities go against each other in specially organized events helped the average party player understand and appreciate the game more than ever before.
When Moneymaker beat the odds, made it to the final table and claimed his $2.5 million grand prize, millions of poker fans were able to see it, live, all over the world. He had achieved every online gambler’s dream, turning less that $40 into a small fortune.
What followed has often been described as the “Moneymaker Effect”—a tidal wave of interest in poker and the creation of online card rooms everywhere. By 2006, revenues from Internet poker rooms rivaled those of online sportsbooks, and the card game leapt to the third most-watched sport on American television, right behind NFL football and NASCAR auto racing.
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