Chris Moneymaker is back in the social-poker club business with the opening on Saturday of a new venue in Louisville, Kentucky. The new Moneymaker Social Louisville is an eight-table facility offering a mix of games on a daily basis.
Moneymaker Tour Executive Director Tony Burns touted the room's debut via a short video that showed Moneymaker offering viewers a brief video tour of the new room:
Moneymaker, the famed 2003 WSOP Main Event champion, will be playing only an abbreviated 2024 WSOP this summer as he spends most of the upcoming weeks playing at and promoting his new club.
New Louisville club becomes sixth active room in Kentucky
Moneymaker Social Louisville is the second social-poker club to open in Louisville, and it's the sixth currently active club in Kentucky. It's also the second-largest club in Kentucky at the present time behind the 11-table Club JAQK venue, also in Louisville.
The Club JAQK venue has been hampered by occasional controversy, however. The club, founded by controversial Midway Poker Tour founder Daniel Bekavac and several of his Chicago-area poker friends, ran into recent difficulties in December centered on Bekavac and the alleged underpaying of dealers and other club staff. Bekavac no longer appears to be involved in Club JAQK's day-to-day operations, but whether he remains one of Club JAQK's co-owners remains unclear.
Second Kentucky club launch for Moneymaker
The six currently active Kentucky social-poker clubs aren't the only venues that have tried to make a go of it in the Bluegrass State. For Moneymaker, it's his second such attempt at opening a room, after a short-lived try in Paducah, near the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in Kentucky's northwestern corner.
In Paducah, the Moneymaker's Social Club opened just before Labor Day of 2022 to much poker-world fanfare and a seemingly warm reception from local officials, including the county's district attorney. That official did not stand for reelection later that fall, however, and his replacement took a much harsher stance regarding social poker's legality, vowing to charge Moneymaker with a felony for operating a gambling business if he refused to close the club.
Moneymaker complied with that request and shuttered the Paducah club after barely five months in operation, but he did not abandon his hopes of operating a poker club in Kentucky. Louisville's county DA affirmed to Moneymaker that his plans for a room in the city were viewed as law-abiding there.
Big room for growth at Moneymaker Social Louisville
Moneymaker Social Louisville's new room manager, Christine Russell, believes that Louisville is a secret hotbed for poker and that Moneymaker Social will thrive. The Louisville area is "loaded with private games," she told PokerOrg, providing a ready-made clientele. Besides the one other club in the city, the only other poker action in the area is at Caesars Southern Indiana, a circuitous drive to the other side of the Ohio River away.
Moneymaker Social Louisville's location within Louisville is a marketing plus as well, said Russell. The room isn't far from the University of Louisville, providing a recreational outlet for students who are old enough to play, and it's also not far from a major UPS (United Parcel Service) hub. The poker club is situated just across Interstate 95 from the southern end of Louisville International Airport.
Moneymaker Social Louisville could quickly become the city's and state's largest poker room, too. Russell shared that the room is easily expandable to 12 tables, which would make it larger than Club JAQK. That's not the limit, however. Should player demand warrant, unused space that's part of the layout could be filled with tables as well. "We could knock out some walls and add some more tables if we needed to," said Russell. That could also make the venue usable as stop for the Moneymaker Poker Tour, which generally requires a larger space in which to operate.
Featured image source: Moneymaker Social Louisville/Christine Russell
