It Was $86, Not $39

Here’s a bit of poker trivia I had not realized until today.

Chris Moneymaker turns 40 years old on Saturday. Was reading around a little about Moneymaker this afternoon and after following a few links learned that one detail from the story of his 2003 WSOP Main Event win has long been misreported. It’s a detail I myself have repeated a few times, I know, both here on the blog and elsewhere.

It has long been passed around that Moneymaker won his $10,000 seat into the WSOP Main Event on PokerStars via a satellite, with the cost of that satellite almost always being referred to as $39. I knew that he didn’t actually win his ME seat in that satellite -- rather, he won entry into a larger satellite, and from there won his seat. But I only just found out that the buy-in for the first one wasn’t $39 -- it was $86.

First, here’s a post by Dan Goldman (former VP of Marketing for PokerStars) on his Braindump v1.0 blog from a couple of years ago in which he originally repeated the $39 figure, then was corrected in a comment by Michael Josem (who currently does PR for PokerStars).

Goldman follows up with a confirmation that Josem is right, the satellite buy-in was $86, despite everyone having repeated $39 for years and years -- including Moneymaker himself!

In Eric Raskin’s oral history of the 2003 WSOP Main Event -- exerpted on Grantland in an article titled “When We Held Kings” -- Moneymaker says that he entered a $39 sit-n-go, winning a seat into a bigger satellite from which he then won his ME seat. In fact, Moneymaker’s autobiography published in 2005 is titled Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker, again repeating the incorrect detail (here rounded up) regarding the buy-in.

This page over in the “PokerStars Online Museum” further confirms both the $86 buy-in figure, noting that it “is correct and has been checked against PokerStars’ official tournament records,” as well as that “earlier reports that it was a $39 satellite were mistaken.” The $86 tourney got Moneymaker a seat in a $650 one with 67 players in which there were three ME seats awarded, with Moneymaker getting one.

Trivia, for sure, but perhaps the most interesting part of it is the fact that so many got the detail wrong for so long.

The Good and the Bad (So Far)

A quick post tonight just to point you to another more considered read from someone at the World Series of Poker.

Dan Goldman is a poker player who has an extensive background that includes having been involved on the executive level at PokerStars during its early days (and into the “boom” years). On his blog, Braindump v1.0, he has shared some stories from those times that are definitely worth reading for those with an interest in the early era of online poker.

Today Goldman shares a post titled “WSOP 2015: Has anything changed?” in which he revisits a post he wrote a year ago titled “Six ways Caesars screwed up the World Series of Poker.” In the post he looks at the first week of this year’s WSOP and assesses the degree to which those items from the earlier post have or have not been addressed.

He adds to that discussion some further thoughts related to the Colossus, which is now playing down to a final table and looks as though it will be extending into an extra day tomorrow to complete. He makes some points about registration problems and payout delays (you might have read about the latter over on PokerNews), then adds “one last rant” about how the WSOP was responding to complaints and concerns over Twitter Sunday night. (I alluded to that brouhaha yesterday.)

I like how Goldman is articulating his concerns and find myself agreeing with him on most counts. So I thought I’d point you over there today for the thoughts of someone who has been a little closer to the action these last several days.