From Woods to Poker Stardom: The Story of Darvin Moon

• Author: Qid
• Filed under: High Stakes News, Jeff Shulman, Poker, WSOP
• Date: Oct 5,2009

If someone would before the 2009 WSOP main event that, Darvin Moon, a logger from Maryland who has played low-stakes poker tournaments in and around Oakland for only few years and has never played poker online. He has learned how to play poker mostly from watching poker shows in television.

After the November Nine was set in July, Darvin Moon has attracted the interest of the media, although Moon would prefer to be logging or hunting in the woods, away from the attention. Moon feels that his success in the tournament hasn’t made any difference:

“I ain’t no different than you or anybody else,” he says. “My business is my business. People are driving me crazy with their questions. Their favorite one is, ‘What’d you do with your money?’ My favorite answer is, ‘What’d you do with your paycheck last week?’ ”

Moon, who has already won $1,263,602 and can book $8.5M payday if he wins the whole tournament, has purchased a modular home to replace the old trailer, new aluminum roof on his parents’ house, a new Chevy Silverado and some used logging equipment. Rest of the money, around half a million after taxes, are going into the bank. Still Moon, who don’t feel like rich, gets up and goes to work every day.

Of the 6,494 players who entered the Main Event, Moon thinks that maybe 6,300 of them were better than him. He values every other finalist over him. He is being realistic. After all he don’t have nearly as much experience as the rest of the pack:

“I really believe all eight of my opponents are better than I am. How can’t I believe that? They all have more experience than I do. I play three nights every two weeks at little tournaments like this.”

Moon won his $10,000 entry fee to poker’s most prestigious event at a $140 tournament at Wheeling Island Casino in West Virginia. After the win his 79-year-old father advised him to take the cash and get back to work, but Moon wanted to take a shot of every poker player’s dream, winning the World Series of Poker main event.

So Moon flew to Vegas (the first time he’d ever been on a commercial jet) and crushed the field with, he admits, an insanely lucky run of cards. “I got incredible cards for eight days,” he says, almost apologetically. “No matter what I did, it seemed like it worked.”

Even though Moon says he just got lucky and doesn’t feel like he is a good player, Jeff Shulman (pictured), another member of the November Nine, feels Moon is being too critical about his poker skills:

“Darvin tries to say he’s not that good, he’s just an amateur who got lucky and ran really well for eight days. But at some point, you can’t say you’re just lucky. He was making good decisions.”

Other WSOP finalist are hiring coaches and trying to elevate their games, Shulman, for instance, just hired Phil Hellmuth to coach him, but Moon prefers to play with Meat and Hunk, Mama and Ducky, Joey and Bubba and the other regulars at the Elks Lodge #2841 and the American Legion and over at the fire hall in Clarysville.

How Moon is preparing for the tournament? He is going to go hiding in the woods:

“We’re leaving Oct. 7 to go to Wyoming for three weeks of mule deer hunting,” he says. “I’ll be out there in the mountains, in a little cabin with no electric, no water. Can’t wait.”

When Chris Moneymaker won the WSOP main event in 2003 an online poker boom started. If Darvin Moon would win the 2009 WSOP main event it could easily launch a new boom. After all, cinderella stories like this are one the reasons why poker is so popular game. One tournament can launch you from rags to riches, or should i say, from earth to Moon…

Source: Washington Post