Chris Moneymaker Won Inaugural Phil’s Thrill PKO

Moneymaker Continues to Print Money in Phil’s Events

Over the past eight months, Chris Moneymaker has graced the final tables of five different Phil Nagy tournaments, finishing with substantial cashes at each one:

Moneymaker made the sixth final table on May 18th, 2026. This time, he chose to win the first ever $10,300 Phil’s Thrill PKO.

This victory brought him the biggest prize from Phil’s tournaments yet: $191,228 — $70,760 in prize money plus $120,468 in bounties.

In total, Moneymaker won over $687K in Phil’s tournaments from July 2025 to May 2026 — just $200K less than he earned from his three Venom final tables in 2020, 2024, and 2026.

How the Poker Community Reacted to Moneymaker’s Results

When Rob Kuhn shared Moneymaker’s victory on X (Twitter) — and also mislead players into thinking that Moneymaker is ancient enough to be above 60 — the community divided into two classic groups: cheerers and haters.

Phil Nagy stated that Chris “gotta slow down” because he is “getting a complex” — and shared AI-generated picture of him with his nickname on ACR:

Patrick Leonard was simply in awe, directly praising Moneymaker:

“He’s ridiculous lol I don’t think people realise how sick his results are.

obviously the main event is ridiculous, but just seems to go wherever and crush lol all the places that online nerds would say he’d get destroyed he crushed lol

• Triton turbos — crushed.
• Venom deep — crushed multiple times.
• First PKO HR — crushed.

Would genuinely buy a course lol.”

Doug Lyford shared an interesting perspective on Moneymaker’s ‘ results:

However, when a win like this happens, there’s inevitably going to a thorn in its side. In this case, that thorn is doubt that players have regarding the fairness of Moneymaker’s victory. Naturally, the main (and only) argument is his affiliation with the ACR team.

The partnership is believed to be the reason for Moneymaker’s sudden surge in online poker, where he hadn’t exactly excelled before becoming an ACR ambassador.

Of course, following the age old tradition of such accusations, there’s no concrete evidence is attached to them, except for personal assurance based on the “just because” principle.

But Did Moneymaker Really Make Money?

Well, this is a loaded question. According to SharkScope, despite some impressive wins, Moneymaker has struggled to recoup his losses on ACR Poker. Between February 2025 and May 18th, 2026, he was over $111K in the red.

That said, these losses may mean nothing on a larger scale of his overall results. After all, Moneymaker recently won almost $150K on No Gamble No Future, which completely covers the minus on the ACR.

Moreover, we don’t know for sure what Moneymaker’s results are in other rooms. But if he can still afford to invest money in ACR Poker ecology and go to major live series — they’re probably not bad either.