MonteDam Swing a "Cool Concept" Says Chris Moneymaker

For a man who has spent the last decade and a bit of his life travelling the world as a leading ambassador for the game of poker, Chris Moneymaker recounts the times he’s been to Amsterdam.

“I’ve been here a couple of times before. Once when I was a kid I came here for a soccer tournament, then another time on a cruise.

“This is the only the second time I’ve come here for poker.”

Moneymaker may have been traveling around the world playing poker, but this is only his fifth WPT Main Event.

“It’s my first one in over ten years! The last one I played was in South Africa and that was amazing, I’d love to go back there.

“It’s nice so far, and I really like the venue. It’s away from all the noise of the city. It’s very peaceful down here playing. Very quaint.”

As for the Main Event, it’s been a pretty up and down day for Moneymaker at the tables today.

“You caught me on the up. I haven’t really been above starting stack all day! I had Ace-King against Aces on a King-high board, which is never fun. So I was doing to about 5,000, and slowly over the last level and a half I’ve worked it back up to about 38,000.

“For a while it was really dodgy. But now it’s a fighting stack; they’re fighting chips! I’m doing just about fine!”

The field has started to swell as the day’s gone on, and Moneymaker says that it feels a pretty international mix.

“I mean I’ve got Juha Helppi on my left, and he’s the only one I really recognise. I know there are a lot of Dutch players in the field, but it doesn’t look like there are many at my table.”

With the MonteDam Swing rapidly reaching its conclusion, the 2003 WSOP Main Event champion thinks that it’s great for poker.

“It means you get a whole month almost of poker at different events. Monte Carlo will always have the bigger buy-in events for people with the appetite for that, but then there’s Amsterdam which is a little smaller for the recreational players.

“It’s a pretty cool concept; I think it would be good with the PokerStars Championship Barcelona in the summer. That’s a really cool stop. I’d love to see a Swing which incorporates that.

Although he’s traveled all over the world, he says that there are still a couple of places he hasn’t visited.

“I’m going to Russia for the PokerStars Championship in Sochi. I’ve been to Russia once, but that was before poker in high school. I’m looking forward to going back and playing poker there.

“India is also growing rapidly, and I’d love to go and play there at some point. I’d love to see what their boom is all about.”