WCOOP Musings

For what price would you sell your privacy and anonymity?

I've spent the last couple of nights covering the WCOOP for PokerStars. I'm always amazed by the number of railbirds that professional poker players attract when they play online. These are people who have nothing better to do than ask annoying, idiotic questions and play the role of "fanboy" to a T. As Johnny Chan told me during the WSOP, these people help pay the bills of the pros, so a certain amount of cordiality from the pros makes business sense. Yet still...

One pro for whom this "online railbird" phenomenon particularly struck me as an issue was Chris Moneymaker, who made a deep run in Event #16, $215 Pot-Limit Omaha (one rebuy). Here's a guy who got lucky at just the right moment. I know everyone remembers the sick bluff he made against Sammy Farha heads-up at the final table of the Main Event in 2003, suggesting that he had some poker skill, but how many remember the river 2-outer he pulled to even make it to the final table?

Yes, yes, you have to get lucky to win a big-field tournament. I get that. But Moneymaker's track record since 2003 speaks for itself. He's just an average guy who got lucky at the right time. Really lucky. Now add to that fact that, with his Hollywood name and fairy tale $39-to-$2,500,000 story, he's basically treated as the Messiah that ushered in the "golden age" of poker. Christ, they even call it the "Moneymaker Effect". What does that do to a man's ego? His sense of who he is? Especially when he was just an average guy beforehand, and has reverted to being just an average guy afterwards.

Ok, he wins the Main Event and gets a sweet endorsement deal from PokerStars. Pretty cool. But his anonymity and privacy, at least in the poker community, are completely shot. Railbirds heckle him mercilessly for not being a world-class professional while at the same time other railbirds are asking him what he had for breakfast (then picking through his shit to confirm his answer).

The price tag for all of this "glory"? $2.5 million and whatever endorsement deal PokerStars signed him to after he won (guaranteed not nearly as lucrative as deals that were signed in 2005 and 2006, at the height of the poker frenzy). Meanwhile, he'll never be just an average guy again.

Is it worth it?