Chris Moorman | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online - Professional Poker Player

Poker Beginnings & The story of how I met Dave Gent

My last blog about Dave Gent’s wedding had me thinking about how we first met. He has had perhaps the greatest influence out of anyone on my poker career and the story of how I met Dave (geeforce1 on Tilt and sexygee on Stars) is pretty random.

It was 2005 and at the time I was just a $1-$2 full ring cash game grinder on the Tribecca network, who occasionally played the odd tournament. My game was very basic and was based on just being incredibly solid and relying on my opponents to make mistakes to win money. Fortunately everyone was pretty awful at poker back then so my opponents didn’t stop to think that I might have a set every time I check raised them and I still got paid off.

One week I decided to play their Sunday tournament and ran really well to get deep. Unfortunately I went card dead once I was deep and everyone kept stealing the guy on my lefts big blind as he had been disconnected for the last 30 minutes. Eventually I found a hand I had been waiting for (AK) and reraised all in over the top of a Geeforce1 steal. He called me with Ace Queen and hit and I was out in 23rd place for peanuts.

Obviously at the time I was upset and thought it was a terrible call etc but as I started to think about it more It began to dawn on me that I should of been reraising him with weaker hands because there was no way he could of had a hand every time! Obviously very basic stuff now but it was an epiphany moment for me at that time.

Rather than go and sulk over the bad beat, I carried on watching the whole tournament as I was impressed with how he had played. Geeforce dominated the whole way and ended up winning it for $35,000. I congratulated him in chat and I half jokingly asked him for his email address for some advice never thinking he would actually help me.

Much to my surprise he added me on MSN messenger and became a poker mentor for. He let me watch his hole cards at the higher stakes games and answered all of my dumb noob questions. Over the next few months I gradually jumped into these games myself when there were softer lineups and this is where I really started to become a pro player.

That summer I qualified for my first WSOP and finally got to meet Geeforce and another guy he had introduced me to, Paul Foltyn or Badpab2, in person. Looking back now it is hilarious as I remember being more nervous about meeting them than going on a first date with a girl you really like, but we all got on great and they were no longer Geeforce andBbadpab to me but Dave and Pab.

Over the years we became even closer which resulted in a big group of us renting out a Vegas house every summer and going on various trips around the world together.

It’s crazy to think how a bad beat could actually help you in the long run. If I’d won that tournament sure I could have been $35,000 richer at the time, but I might never of became the player that I am today.

London, WCOOP and $10 Million in Cashes

After Los Angeles I returned back home to the UK for my good friend Dave (geeforce1) Gent’s wedding to his fiancée Giselle (Zel.) Although I don’t get to see them very often they are two of my best friends and along with Paul Foltyn are the first people I met through poker.

The wedding was a really good time. They had hired out a wonderful venue Stupton Hall and it was good to catch up with a lot of old friends which I had met whilst travelling with Dave and Zel.

After this I decided to spend a month in London and stayed with Liv Boeree. She has an unbelievable penthouse and was an awesome host. I grinded FTOPS there and almost got my 2nd FTOPS jersey but finished short in 2nd (yes a 2nd, hold the comments) place in the $129 KO FTOPS which was good for $62k.

Liv even convinced me to help her put together a new couch for her patio. Although very daunting at first with the millions of different pieces and limited instructions I managed to get it done just in time before the BBQ she was hosting that night.

Florida for a week to play the Seminole Hard Rock $10 million guarantee. The format of the tournament was a $5k rebuy with unlimited reentries. I know people who fired off about 8 bullets, but fortunately I managed to run up my first entry into a very workable stack after day 1. Matt Savage did a great job organizing the tourney and it was surprisingly well ran for its inaugural year. Also it totally crushed the guarantee by $2 million.

My table on day 1 was pretty absurd with 2 people dusting off their 300bbs in level 1 and crazy hands throughout the day. I even got to play against rapper Nelly for a bit! Day2 didn’t go as smooth and I found myself short approaching the bubble. Fortunately I managed to hold with A-K v K-10 to double up 10 spots before the money. From there things went much better for me until I got jacks all in versus tens for a top 20 stack. The AQT board gave both of us a sweat but I couldn’t resuck on the turn and river and busted out in 261st place for a small profit.

The rest of the week I spent resting up and enjoying myself before the WCOOP grind that was about to commence. I did find time to hit up a theme park and a water park, though. Bush Gardens was a place I had been to as a 12 year old boy and found amazing. Although some of the rides seemed nowhere near as big or scary as when I had been on them previously they had introduced some new rides including Sheikra, which proved to be a thrilling ride. The animal part of the park was something I didn’t remember too much from my childhood but was particularly well done with the feeding of giraffes being a highlight.

The water park I went to was Blizzard Beach, which is part of the Disney Resort. This was the park I had wanted to go to the most as a kid when we were on holiday in Florida, but unfortunately we had left it till the end of the trip and there had been a hurricane so the park was shut. That meant I had never got to go on Summit Plummit which is a 120 foot drop slide which you can reach speeds of up to 60 mph. I had been waiting to go on this slide for 16 years and it was well worth the wait. The rest of the park was a bit of a letdown with it being more for kids than adults but the layout of the park was in true Disney style; picturesque and very well done.

Since I was already in Florida I decided to return to one of my favorite places for the month of September, Playa del Carmen, Mexico for the WCCOP held on PokerStars. Evidently it is hurricane season down here so I haven’t felt too bad staying in grinding all day, as the weather here is starting to resemble London.

Grinding went pretty well here right from day 1 and all in all I managed to win 11 tourneys this month with the biggest being the FTP 1k for $56k. Despite cashing 10 times in WCOOP events I was unable to go deeper than a 13th place finish in the $320r 6 max PLO tourney. The big news of the month though, was that I hit the $10 million in lifetime online cashes mark.

At the beginning of the month I had noticed that I was about $250,000 short of this mark and I always knew I had a shot at getting there during the WCOOP due to the insane prizepools at this time of year and that I would be playing 23 days straight! My dream was to win a WCOOP to get over the line and I had a few semi sweats at it but in the end I had to settle for the next best thing, which was winning a regular tourney to make it. This was still amazing though as I got the normal jubilation of shipping a tournament plus the once in a lifetime feeling of hitting the $10 million line. PokerNews and PocketFives were reporting a lot on my progress and I was overwhelmed by the responses I got from my friends and fans when I finally made it.

As I write this I’m flying off to London today for the EPT there. I’m hoping I can final table two EPT London events in the same year, but this time finish 7 places better. To get so close last time at my home event only increases my desire to get myself in that position again. It’s going to be great to meet up with all my friends again who I haven’t seen for a few months and I’m particularly looking forward to Tom Middleton’s belated EPT celebration party. The plan is to hire out a party bus for the day, hitting up the races and then partying through the night. Hopefully my next blog will be good news about that EPT!

What’s new in 2013 – Part II

I spent most of May back in my favourite place, Playa del Carmen, Mexico playing SCOOP. It ended up being a great time as several other pros came down to hang and play there as well. I shared a place with my girlfriend, along with Maria Ho and her boyfriend Noah Vaillancourt (Dirty.brazil). Calvin Anderson (cal42688), his girlfriend Kami, and his horse Connor Drinan (Blanconegro) got the condo above us. Amit Makhija (amak316) and his girlfriend were already living there. Even British live superstar Jake Cody came down for a couple days to try his luck in the SCOOP Main Event after deep runs at the EPT Grand Final and The $25k Bellagio main event.

Between the lot of us we were able to put up some good scores. I made a SCOOP final table in one of the most fun events of the series, the $530r 6 max action hour, but ultimately finished a disappointing 6^th. Cal finaled two SCOOP events, Maria finaled the last chance turbo SCOOP high event, and Noah made several big final tables including the brawl. It was great to talk poker with some people I haven’t really discussed strategy with too much before and I think we all benefited from that.

From Playa I headed straight to Las Vegas for the WSOP. I got in on the morning of the $5k nl and although I was lacking sleep I soon woke up when I managed to take the chiplead a few hours into the tournament. Unfortunately, though, I peaked too soon and ended up bubbling that first event of the summer. However, to get that many chips in my first event was great for morale.

Sadly the rest of the series continued in pretty much the same vain with a lot of stacks but only 3 cashes to show for it. That was until the last week of the series where I managed to final table Event 45 the $1500 ante only event. I really enjoyed the format of this tournament, as it required a lot of adaption to your particular table whilst also thinking about outside of the box plays.

For anyone unfamiliar with this format the basics of it are that there are no blinds throughout the whole tournament but that the antes increase each level with the bring in increasing when the lowest chip available is no longer required. The player to the left of the dealer button begins the preflop and postflop betting with the button moving around the table as it would in a normal tournament. The first player to act has three initial options. These are to either fold, to bring in the action with the lowest denomination chips which is in play or to raise.

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The above is an interview I gave deep in the event which outlined some basic strategies one might use to progress in an event like this. The final table played out quite crapshooty due to the incredibly high antes, which made for a rollercoaster ending. At one point 6 handed I was the chipleader but after losing a couple of crucial hands and blinding down for the next couple of orbits I ended up getting very short and in the end I busted 5th for $44,227 to make me about break even on the summer at least.

Even though Poker was my main focus on this trip I still managed to have a few crazy Vegas nights out along the way. Two of the most memorable were my girlfriend Katie’s birthday and Matt Perrins bracelet rail/afterparty. For Katie’s birthday we got a couple of tables at Ghost Bar and got most of the poker community to come out with us. Although a lot of the night is a blur luckily a lot of photos were taken to remind us of all of the adventures.

Matt’s final table rail and after party was truly epic. Ash Mason bought custom made Pez t-shirts for all 35 elite railers and Matt was even kind enough to throw in free beers for everyone who came down to rail. As you can imagine things soon got out of hand with countless shoe bombs (chugging your alcoholic drink out of your shoe) and the chants and noise from the thunderdome increasing by the minute.

Matt came through for the rail and managed to win literally every big all in pot he played. Before we knew it he was heads up for his second bracelet, with a monster chiplead, which is the stuff dreams are made of. What happened next was one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in poker. Matt and his opponent Arthur Pro took a quick break from the tournament to do unison celebration shoe bombs by the rail. Undeterred the two legends got back to work and battled for the bracelet, however it wasn’t long before Matt was victorious and had his second WSOP bracelet. The party had only just begun though and carried on throughout the night first at Gillys and then at the mirage fountains (but that’s another story!)

After Vegas I made a quick stop in LA for my birthday to go to Six Flags. I love rollercoasters and that location is one of the best for the biggest and fastest rides. I first went to Six Flags a few years back and was amazed by the variety of rollercoasters available. The flash pass VIP ticket that you can buy makes your experience so much better as you get to avoid all of the queues that come with your regular trip to an amusement park. Every year they bring out new coasters which makes me keep coming back for more. This time I got to experience Full Throttle which was definitely a solid ride, however, it’s still no match on my favourite rollercoaster of all time X2.

What’s new in 2013 – Part I

So far 2013 has been a great year for me. I’ve accomplished a lot of goals, including an FTOPS win, my first EPT final table – which was made even sweeter by achieving it in London, and another WSOP final table. One of the most important though, has been working to conquer my 10 million dollar target. Obviously I’m talking about online cashes, and I’m so proud to be the first person in the world to hit 10 million.

So what has most of this year included besides poker scores? Well I’ve been quite active off the live and virtual felt as well. I’ll break down the last couple months.

I kicked off the New Year at PCA enjoying the mostly sunny weather. Between tournaments I found time to get up to some shenanigans including swimming with stingrays with my friends Sam Chartier and Trishelle Cannatella and a night out with the brits.

From there I headed to Las Vegas to participate in the NBC Heads Up Invitational. I was so honored to be asked to compete, and was hoping to show everyone that even though I am known for getting second, I actually am decent at heads up. I played great in round one to beat poker legend Carlos Mortensen, but unfortunately the draw wasn’t too kind to me and I ran into Jungleman (Daniel Cates) in the second round and found myself coolered in a 3 bet pot pretty early into the match. I still had an awesome time being able to be a part of the whole thing. It’s an event that is really great for poker as a whole.

I spent most of February checking out Playa del Carmen, Mexico. First off let me start by saying if you haven’t been, go immediately! This place is great; a perfect beach town, with awesome people and an incredible vibe. I definitely found it hard at times to have a balance between poker and life outside of that, but I made sure to take in as much of the culture and scene as possible. One highlight was checking out one of the seven wonders of the world, Chichen Itza and then ziplining through the jungle.

In March I was back home in London for the EPT, and needless to say that turned out well for me. I built a stack quickly on the first day before a huge mistep that almost brought about my demise. I six bet queen ten suited into pocket queens versus an extremely aggressive opponent but managed to make a flush on the turn. From then on I felt like I was freerolling and really brought my A game for the rest of the tournament. Unfortunately I lost a couple of huge hands on the day leading up to the final table so I ended up making the final table with only 20bbs. I knew I was going to need some luck to double up, but it just didn’t happen for me this time when I ended up going out in 8th place after losing a flip versus Theo Jorgenson. It still was an awesome experience because most of my family and several of my friends were able to be there and see me on the final table in my home city.

In April I was off to Berlin for the following EPT hoping to build on my run in London. I really love this city, mostly from my awesome memories with the lads from the last few years (a second place finish in the High Roller event the previous year also helps!). Although the main event didn’t go to plan with an early day1 exit Berlin still remained good to me as I was able to score another second place finish in the 2k euro side event.

Author: Chris Moorman

Poker Beginnings & The story of how I met Dave Gent

London, WCOOP and $10 Million in Cashes

What’s new in 2013 – Part II

What’s new in 2013 – Part I

Stay turned for part 2!