The luckiest run in WSOP main event history

Do you really think the boom would not have happened if the 2003 ME hadn't been won by somebody with a cute name?

It wasn't only the name, but the story. A casual player who qualified in a satellite for $40 and turned it into millions. If he can do it, so can you. The name helped a lot, but the marketing of anyone can even the average Joe was a godsend.

I'm sure I'll get shouted down for this yet again, but I'm with you on this one... the poker boom was gonna happen with or without Moneymaker.

However, I'll give him some credit for enhancing it, but more because he ended up being an outstanding everyman ambassador (like Raymer after him). Plus, the rags-to-riches part of it certainly got a few extra people to give the game a try.

But in the end, the ME champ could have been named Siriluethaiwattana and we still would have seen a sizable uptick in the years that followed.

So why wasn't there a poker boom after Hal Fowler won? Or Robert Varkonyi?

Four letters, ESPN.

2003 was the first year they showed more than just the FT (and I also believe it was the first year they had hole card cams). They were able to tell the backstory of players moreso than previous years, more interviews, etc. If you look at the entrants the main got in the early 2000s, you can see the popularity growing. 2003 was the perfect storm that combined the added interest from the extended coverage and an amateur winning.

I agree, it was happening eventually. Moneymaker's win just shifted caused the boom to happen at warp speed.

Great analysis. Great post.

Bill Gates could have won the ME in 2003 and poker would have seen the boom regardless. ESPN coverage and hole card camera started the avalanche..........Moneymaker was not it.

There are a lot of factors that contributed to the poker boom, but a lot of people dont realize the one factor that actually started it, and was most responsible for it...
PartyPoker.com marketing
At a time when online poker sites did marketing by putting an ad in CardPlayer magazine, PartyPoker.com was looking for ways to talk to non-poker players, and do any kind of mass media marketing.
PartyPoker.com bought up all of the commercial space around the original airings of the WPT, and then the WSOP. The numbers on the site were growing by 100% per day before the WSOP aired with Moneymaker.

The boom was happening, as others have mentioned, with or without Monkeymaker. He just happened to be a good story within it, and also helped PokerStars be a part of the boom.

I wish I could find it, but Dan Harrington has some funny stories about how 1995 ME 2nd place finisher Howard Goldfarb luckboxed his way through the ME in 94 and 95.

It absolutely still would have. The Moneymaker victory and his backstory were just the icing on the cake. The 2 biggest contributing factors to the poker boom were the proliferation of online poker, and ESPN bringing the game to the mainstream.

Streaming wasn't a thing yet. Television was still the unquestioned king of home entertainment. ESPN wasn't just one of the most popular networks, it also happened to be the #1 rated network within the demographic that makes up the majority of the poker player pool. The '03 footage took up thousands of hours of ESPN air time over the following year. It basically programmed the idea of poker into the mind of the correct demographic, and the ability for them to easily access the game for the first time from the confines of their own home via their computer hooked them.

I can confirm that in Fall 2023 as ESPN was showing the weekly ME footage (it was originally aired during Sept and Oct that year months after the event) the build up was very real before any of us knew who’d won. I was at two bachelor party weekends that Fall and everyone wanted to play NLHE all of the sudden. Hole card cams and ESPN for the first time investing in poker did the trick, not the mere fact Moneymaker won.

This year I believe both Lexy and Bob Mather were able to make Day 2 of the Main. Nice runs, both above expectation.

Whiskey tango foxtrot??

The 2003 Main Event finished on 23 May. The result was widely known the following days.

Not for people who had no idea poker existed.

There seemed to be a run of luckbox (to varying degrees) runnerups in the 90s, by far the most being imo Kevin McBride. That said it seemed he tilted everyone at the FT except for Scotty; especially TJ who busted out inexcusably.

Comparing Varkonyi to Greg and especially Ferguson is silly, though Ferguson did get vaporized by the deck once it got nine-handed.

Furlong was a very rich super aggressive amateur (and very nice guy) but people forget he made the FT previously, went to the WSOP every year, and had played a lot of tournaments in Ireland & the UK. He knew how to ride a heater and big stack.

Ivey took a sick beat but CM was never folding at any point other than maybe to an AIPF shove.

Did a rookie Seidel luckbox to get HU with Chan?

But factoring everything it has to be Fowler. Yang & Gold were Moss & Doyle compared to him. Plus he might not have been able to name what casino he was in.