Renée Neville wanted a closer relationship with her two poker-playing sons, so she started playing online to learn the game. Now she's $15K richer after winning the August edition of ClubGG Masters.
Neville, the mother of Andrew and Johnnie "Vibes" Moreno, still has a long way to go to catch up to the well-decorated careers of her sons — Andrew has over $4.5 million in earnings according to The Hendon Mob, while Johnnie has built a career as a vlogger and streamer with over $400K in tournament winnings.
But the win represents a lot more than $15K for a mother who was reluctant to support poker in the first place.
'I just didn't understand'
"In the beginning, when Andrew wanted to pursue poker, I was like, oh, you've got to go to college," Neville told PokerOrg. "This is just not the thing that I wanted my kids to grow up to do. And I just didn't understand."
She came to accept the lifestyle after she saw their growth and maturity — a result of success on the felt and in their personal lives.
"I realized that their path needs to be their path and I need to be on board with that if I want to have a meaningful relationship with both of them. So for me, connecting with my kids is super important. And so I needed to learn more about poker, for one. I needed to get involved with that if I wanted to be able to really be in their life and understand what was going on."
Neville started to learn poker by playing online and reading about the game. She would keep close tabs on the results of her sons and she was ready to jump in the car at a moment's notice if they ran deep.
"Every time they would be in a tournament, I would get in my car and I would drive to Vegas and I would be on the rail for them. And it was pretty exciting being on the rail."
'Mom, you're not ready'
One day, tired of just watching, Neville told Andrew that she wanted to play live.
"And he's like, Mom, you're not ready. You need to play online, you know, hundreds of thousands of games. And I kept thinking, no, I want to try it."
She didn't just want to play, she wanted to be good at it, so she tapped Johnnie for some help.
"He showed me the hands and what I should fold and what I should play. And then Andrew, the same thing, he talked to me about the mental game of poker and how to be mentally tough."
Johnnie and Andrew Moreno at the 2023 WPT Championship. What unfolded was a situation that Johnnie says left her 'so scarred from the experience' that she went straight back to playing Sunday freerolls. Neville arrived at the poker room only to find out that she needed to sign up for a player's card, which delayed her registration. Once she returned, the seating situation was confusing and Neville felt overwhelmed.
"It was really mortifying. I felt like a fish out of water. I'm an engineer. I'm a professional in the corporate world. Walking into that poker room, I thought I would be comfortable because I'm comfortable watching my kids play in Vegas, but it was totally different, you know, being there on my own by myself with nobody."
She busted out of the tournament in 30 minutes and hasn't returned since.
The comfort zone
Neville's win on ClubGG was a much different story after more than a year of experience on the site. She chipped up early and weathered a few storms before she finally made the final table with the short stack.
"I had Andrew's voice in my head and I had Johnnie's voice in my head. [Her opponents] were playing a little bit scared."
Neville soon soared into the chip lead and that's when things started to look familiar. "I started bullying, which is totally not the way that I am, but you know, I would just push with cards that weren't that great." The strategy worked and she won the tournament with a double knockout on the final hand for her first five-figure score.
So, what's next for "Mama Mo?" Maybe some live play, but definitely some studying.
"I played over 10 hours and 588 hands or something like that. With ClubGG, you can see every single hand that you play. So I took screenshots from my final table for around 30 of the hands and I'm gonna sit down with Johnnie or Andrew."
