General | Chris Moorman - moorman1 online - Professional Poker Player

My first stop in 2014 was another trip to the Bahamas but this time a poker related one for PCA (one of the biggest annual events in poker). Although there are over 50 events throughout the 10 day festival I only managed to play two of them, the $10k main event and the $25k high roller. The main event started off strong for me despite an incredibly solid starting table where 7 of the 9 players were top pros. I ended day 1 with an above average stack and started day 2 strong, quickly doubling once more. Unfortunately the next few levels didn’t go so well and my stack dwindled as a result before I ended up busting around 100 spots before the money.

In the high roller I had the eventual winner Jacob Schindler on my left on day 1 and got into a couple of tough spots versus him and on my final hand my KK couldn’t beat his AK all in pre flop and just like that I was out early on day 1 for a very disappointing tournament. The trip as a whole was awesome, though, with one of the highlights as always being a group lazy river ride. I also managed to get out of the hole for the trip with a big Sunday which included a win in the Super Size Sunday on FTP and a 5th place finish in the Whale on 888 for $50k combined.

After PCA I headed back to La for a week. Rather than rest up before embarking on the online grind I convinced Katie to go skydiving with me. I’m scared of heights so this was actually a pretty big deal for me and up until the last minute I wasn’t sure that I was going to go through with it. I’m so glad that I did though, as it turned out to be an amazing experience. I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier in life than when I was gliding through the air at high speed. That happiness ended abruptly though when my parachute opened and the harness began to crush my groin.

After braving skydiving I hopped on a short flight upto Vancouver to grind TCOOP with some good friends of mine, Maddison Bergeron, Noah Vaillancourt and Maria Ho. The TCOOP festival was actually a disaster for me as I only cashed 1 tournament out of close to 40 events. Luckily I ran super hot in other stuff and have been on a permanent heater since I arrived. In the past 25 sessions I’ve only had 1 or 2 losing sessions. Throughout everything else I’ve had 10 tourney wins on 4 different sites including the Party Major. Also I final tabled both the Stars 1k and Ftp 1k buyin tourneys last week which shows the work I’ve put in on my game is really paying off right now. Obviously the past few weeks have been a pretty absurd run for mtt’s and completely unsustainable but I feel like I’m playing the best poker of my life at the moment which is really encouraging for the rest of the year and particularly the WSOP which has already given me goosebumps thinking about this year after the recent schedule announcement.

Whilst here in Vancouver I managed to drag myself away from the computer for a few days and headed upto Whistler. I didn’t realise how incredibly beautiful the place was actually going to be as I’d never been to a ski town before let alone ski! We were really lucky to get snow the week we went as well because apparently there hadn’t been fresh snow for at least a month before that. I did a 3 hour private skiing lesson with Maria and amazingly I managed to stay on my feet for the whole time.

My time in Vancouver is nearly up and I’m hoping to take some of that online run good into the live arena as I’m going to be playing LAPC and Bay101 as a shooting star in early March. In addition to a trip to the Napa Valley for wine tasting and Maria’s birthday.

Lastly I’m super excited to announce that I will have a poker strategy book being released by the end of the year. I’m putting a ton of work into this and I really hope it will help aspiring poker players to reach the next level. This is the first time I’ve done anything strategy related so I’m thrilled to have my first venture be a poker book.

PokerNews Announcement:

The Exclusive Pre-release of my “Moorman’s Book of Poker” Poker Strategy Book

The past three months have been pretty hectic including plenty of time in the air. I’m fortunate that I don’t mind flying one bit as I’ve been in Montreal, Prague, London, Florida, Bahamas, Los Angeles and Vancouver. Now that’s a lot of traveling around even for me.

I went to Montreal and rented a condo for the whole of November and it was actually the first time I’ve been there. I found it to be a great city although this place makes London feel warm. Due to the freezing cold snowy weather I spent most of my time playing online and managed to have a decent month, reclaiming the top spot on pocketfives in the process.

The last week of my stay in Montreal was particularly cool as a lot of good friends arrived in town for the WPT. Unfortunately I busted early on day 1 and didn’t play my best but other than that it was a really fun week with one of the many highlights being Marc Andre’s epic Thanksgiving party.

No sooner was the WPT over and I was on the road again with the next destination Prague for the EPT. I was excited to take my girlfriend Katie there (she’d never been before) as it has a real festive feel to it with the Christmas Market and the cold weather. This year it wasn’t actually that cold, although the Christmas market and architecture in the old square are still a sight to behold.

I arrived to Prague a week early so I could play the Eureka Poker Tour Main Event and the event was far bigger than I thought it would be with over 1300 runners. I found myself much more in the groove in this live tourney compared to Montreal and also had luck on my side a couple of times. In one hand I put a real dirty beat on this guy after he hero called my all in bvb with A8 v my 78 on KT63 when I pinged in the miracle gutter ball 9 on the river close to the money.

At the same time Katie had also made it in to the money and although there were still 150 players left a double final table for us would of been unreal. Unfortunately for her she lost a few pots then got her aces cracked to bust. I guess girls really do always have the aces. For me however it was pretty smooth sailing until I eventually busted in 12th place to Stevie 444 when I couldn’t hit my nut flush draw v his flopped two pair. The tournament was huge value though and really well ran by an old friend of mine Jonathan Raab. The Eureka Tour is growing fast and really is like a mini EPT.

Unfortunately my near miss in the Eureka tourney didn’t lead to a deep run in the EPT main event a few days later when I overplayed my 94 suited like it was pocket aces and got duly punished! From Prague it was back home to the UK for Christmas. It was great to be back for the first time since September even if it was a short and sweet visit. After I had carried out all of the Christmas traditions in the Moorman household it was off to the Bahamas… not for PCA but for a new years cruise the week before PCA! I stopped off in Freeport as well as Nassau and had a nice relaxing holiday away from poker for a few days before the start of what I hope will be a big year for me.

Category: General

Off to a ‘Flying Start’ in 2014!

PokerNews Announcement:

Eureka it’s Cold!

Stay tuned for part 2…PCA, LA and falling from the sky.