Chris Moneymaker is the reason most of us at PokerOrg have jobs. But for his ragamuffin-to-riches Cinderella story 23 years ago, most of us would probably be doing other things right now.
Imagine Sarah Herring as a tour guide in Southeast Asia. Matt Hansen coaching high school baseball. Lefty selling bait on Lake Hartwell. You get the idea.
But here we are at the 2026 World Series of Poker, a crack commando unit sent to Vegas for a job we never expected to have. We escaped from the real world to the poker underground. We're not sure if we'd ever be wanted back in our old lives, but if there was a story to be told, you'd know where to find us.
We thought we'd seen everything. Turns out, the 2003 champ had a surprise in mind.
He's back: Moneymaker re-living the dream?
During all of our years at the World Series, we learned to not expect Moneymaker until the WSOP Main Event. The man has a life. The man has a family. He has more dogs than most people have socks. He doesn't really do the grinding thing these days. It was only a few weeks ago he was waxing poetic about his love of pickleball and telling the folks who subscribe to his newsletter to not expect him in Vegas until the Main Event.
So our plans for Moneymaker were... well, as usual, waiting for Moneymaker to show up for the Main Event and hoping he'd last longer than he did in the 2025 Main (no need to remember that debacle now).
So, imagine our abject surprise when learning that, as we finalized all of our studied Moneymaker planning, the 2003 champ had been slow-rolling us all along. He's actually here. In Vegas. And, he's... well, he's here to do our jobs.
You can click the video above to see it all happening. Moneymaker is apparently here for the grind and is officially the Guest Editor of PokerOrg's 2026 WSOP coverage.
Chris Moneymaker has turned up early for the 2026 World Series of Poker.
PokerOrg's new Guest Editor
Here's the thing: any of us who have been grinding the poker media game for a couple of decades could stumble and cough over the idea that Chris Moneymaker might guide what we do as PokerOrg for an entire WSOP summer.
What does he know that we don't? What could he offer that we don't understand?
I don't know that any of us could honestly answer that question without raising our eyebrows just a little bit.
But then there is this: just short of seven minutes into Moneymaker's first vlog from the summer, he gets approached by a guy wanting a selfie. Moneymaker does what he does, and he does the selfie with the guy.
And then the guy calls after him, "We're all here because of you."
In a flash, Moneymaker disappears, and the guy turns to the camera and says, "We're all here because of him. He knows it."
Moneymaker is the guy who knows what it's like to go to Las Vegas with a dream. Maybe it's the dream of winning a fortune. Maybe it's the dream of just making it to the money. Maybe it's the dream of meeting your hero.
Does anyone ever go to Vegas dreaming of actually being somebody's hero? Our guess is that Chris Moneymaker didn't think about that in 2003.
And maybe... just maybe... that's the story this year. And that's why, this year, Chris Moneymaker is the Guest Editor of our WSOP coverage.
