Chris Moorman Shared Who Gave Him Awe Early in His Career

How Moorman’s Poker Career Began

I discovered poker in 2005 whilst studying Economics at Essex University. I grew up playing card games such as Bridge and Rummy so I picked things up fairly quickly and instantly was hooked on the strategic elements of the game and how competitive it felt when I played. I played for fun to begin with versus my mates at university but we transitioned to playing online when we came across a UK student championship freeroll which took place every Monday night.

I was fortunate enough to come 2nd in it one week for $300 and decided to keep the money online and play with it rather than cashing out. I made a switch to cash games and got my strategies completely wrong by pushing all in every hand with any two cards to steal the blinds. Obviously this would work most of the time until I ran into a big hand and would lose a buy-in. I was playing 10/25 cent online buying in for $25 at a time and I quickly ran my $300 down to my last $25 by playing like an idiot.

I downloaded pokertracker and started to work closely with that alongside my cash games. I analyzed all of the hud stats and my opponents plays and took detailed notes. I was obsessed with numbers so to me this actually felt fun and I enjoyed discovering regulars leaks and developing strategies to exploit them. I took these new strategies to the $0.50/$1 streets and became one of the best regs there, building my bankroll in the process.

That summer at University I made up a white lie to my parents that I’d got a job in the local Asda Supermarket just off campus so would be staying in Colchester and not heading home. Meanwhile me and my best mate Stuart where playing the online cash tables and small tournaments on Victor Chandler whilst watching an epic Ashes series on the TV with Freddie Flintoff and co.

The big drawback with all of this was that my studies really suffered. Once I came back for my second year of a three year course I stopped going to lectures and would just play play play. I told myself I’d catch up on my stuides nearer exam time. It was about this point that I had a real epiphany moment in poker.

I was playing the big monthly tournament, it was a $50 rebuy I think but I would just play one bullet as I didn’t like to eat into my cash bankroll I’d built up with long shot tournaments. Anyway I was making a deep run with about $30k uptop and super excited. Cash games had started to become a bit routine like a job for me and this felt new and I was having a huge adrenaline rush and I liked the feeling! The player on my left got disconnected for over an hour and I was thinking this is good for me I can just steel their blinds. What I didn’t anticipate was that someone else would do it before me.

Back then at that stage in my game it was illegal to reraise without a premium so I waited and waited and finally found AK when this player Geeforce1 who had kept stealing the blinds opened and to my shock called my all in with AQ!. They hit and I was out in 18th place and devastated.

9 time out of 10 in that situation I would have raged turned off my PC and gone and done something else to get over it. But it quickly occured to me that was probably the best hand they had the whole time and that they’d just been bluffing their way up the chip counts. I watched the rest of the tournament until they took it all down and was in awe of their game. It was like they were playing a different game! I wrote a nice message in chat to them after they took it down and to my suprise they ended up adding me on MSN messenger and became a poker mentor for me.

They were quite a few steps ahead of me at the time playing $5/10 regularly and a lot of the bigger tournaments on multiple sites! With their help I started to learn to bluff and my god it was addicting! I became even more passionate about the game and started to develop my game much more quickly being able to bounce ideas off actual pro players.

Moorman’s Secret for Combining Fatherhood and Poker

It’s early stages still as my son Mikel was born on February 27th so it’s only been 73 days so far! (as of May 11th, 2026) Everything has been really smooth to begin with. I think I’m lucky as my fianceé also has a 9 year old son so has a lot of previous experience of being a mum so hasn’t been thrown in at the deep end as much as you can be.

Still it is a complete life style changer and in anticipation of that I decided to take a complete break from live poker after he was born so that I could be around as much as possible to help out and to keep morale high! I think the real test is to come in the next few months when I go and play the WSOP most days.

I’ve still been playing a fair bit online in the meantime to prepare for the summer and get the reps in but the real serious sessions are just on Sunday where I will really focus in my office area without distractions. The rest of the time If I play I only play 2 or 3 tables so that I am still available to help with things. Results have been great so far with two $100k+ scores and probably 6/7 outright wins. The baby run good is real!

Questions About ACR Poker

Q: Is your online volume exclusively ACR?

Q: I voluntarily self excluded myself years ago, and now can’t get my account re-opened (good boy ACR). Can you throw in a good word?

Moorman: Self exclusion is taken very seriously and won’t be reversed under any circumstances, sorry.

Q: Anyway for you to put in a word with the ACR team for more mixed game options? PLO8 and Big O are great, would love to see some TORSE or Badugi options.

Moorman: I’ll mention it to Phil Nagy for sure and let you know what he says. He’s all about pleasing the players so if there is demand I’m sure they will try do something. Watch this space!

Moorman’s Approach to the Game

Q: How do you determine what tournaments you decide to play? Is it based on bankroll, competition, overall value, or maybe a mix of all 3?

Q: How many tables do you play at once?

Moorman: I used to play a lot more tables back in the day when edges were far greater. Now I play a max of 14 I’d say on a busy Sunday but a lot of that is max late regging so easy decisions. Ideally I like to stay at 12 or under although too few and I start getting fancy play syndrome!

Q: Can you get great poker results without studying in general…I never tried sims or solvers?

Moorman: You can but it’s a lot harder these days. It just depends if you have the white magic!

Mix of Short Questions and Answers

Q: Do you live in the US?

Moorman: Yeah, I’ve been in Las Vegas for the past 7-8 years. Absolutely love it here.

Q: How old were you when you first started playing poker?

Moorman: 19-20 for online. Just turned 21 for my first ever WSOP event in 2006.

Q: A night out in Stoneys or a night out in a super club?

Moorman: Stoneys 100% not even close for me. I’d always choose a bar over a club as I can actually have proper conversations.

Q: Instead of ‘Moorman’s Book Of Poker’ did you consider titling it ‘The Book Of Moorman?’

Moorman:: Of course! But there would have been legal issues potentially and you don’t make enough money writing a book to sweat those.

Q: Do you cringe when dealt a JJ?

Q: Most annoying avatar or pic you’ve seen in the last 20 years playing online?

Moorman: This was my avatar for a few years on pokerstars back in the day and I lost count of the number of people who came up to me at live stops to tell me that they had to block it.