If you dream, you can be a Poker Champ. As in many other sports venues, the players are getting better and more competitive at a younger age. In professional basketball, LeBron James was just nineteen years old when he jumped from high school right into the professional ranks, and became an immediate star. Tennis players, particularly female players, are winning professional tournaments in their teens. The best ladies golfer in the world today is barely sixteen years old.

These champions all dreamed of becoming the best in their respective sports.  They then dedicated themselves to honing their skills in their quest for being the best.  The same traits that we find in the LeBron’s of the basketball world are those we find in online poker rooms on any given day.  They are the breeding grounds of the future Poker Champions of the world.

Chris Moneymaker Changes the Face of Pro Poker
The world of sports is famous for stories about unknowns who overcame all odds to become champions.  Over the past six years, nowhere has this been more apparent than in the world of professional Poker.  Before 2003, it was widely believed that the only way Poker players could advance in their sport was through blood and sweat in the WSOP tournaments.

These tournaments often were a costly experience for Poker players who toiled for years in Poker rooms with the hope of getting a seat at a Championship table, and garnering a big prize.  Chris Moneymaker changed the game of professional Poker forever in 2003, when he advanced from a qualifying seat in a satellite online tournament to winning the WSOP Championship.

A “New Moneymaker” Just Around the Bend
Just to prove it was no fluke, Greg Raymer followed Moneymaker’s path the following year and went from online qualifier to WSOP titlist.  This gave tremendous authority to online poker.  Soon, online poker tournaments were filled - from novice players who had dreams of becoming the next “Moneymaker” to veteran players who honed their skills at the tables in online poker rooms.

2008 WSOP Winner, Peter Eastgate, Another Dreamer who Wins Big
In the summer of 2008, The World Series of Poker Championships “Main Event” took place at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.  Once again, online poker players stole the show as a young 22-year-old online upstart from Denmark, Peter Eastgate, defeated Russian, Ivan Demidov, to capture the title and win the $9 million first place prize.  

There are more young online poker players like Moneymaker and Eastgate sharpening their skills with dreams of becoming the next online “unknowns” to catapult onto poker’s main stage.  Only time will tell if the lock that online poker players seem to have asserted on the poker tournament world will stay tight.  What is sure is that competition within the online poker world will not wane any time soon.