Credit: World Poker Tour on Flickr under CC BY-ND 2.0 – no changes were made to the image

The Centennial State has a pretty rich and interesting history with poker. During the Colorado gold rush of the mid-19th century, the card game became a favored pastime considered integral to the frontier lifestyle of the time. In fact, when the state began regulating poker games in the early ‘90s, it did so in casinos located in Black Hawk, Cripple Creek, and Central City—which also happen to be Colorado’s three most historic mining towns.

Now, the state is even known for its affiliations with major names in the world of poker. Black Hawk alone is the famed home of the Horseshoe Black Hawk. The casino is a sister location to the Horseshoe Las Vegas, which hosts the prestigious World Series of Poker (WSOP) every year, and as a result even boasts a dedicated WSOP-themed poker room.

Of course, Colorado is also home to some of the biggest names among poker players, themselves. Arguably the most popular is Steve O’Dwyer, an Irish-American pro who boasts pretty significant achievements. According to CNN, which covered O’Dwyer’s challenge-filled journey to a Bahamas poker tournament in 2023, he reached the top spot of the Global Poker Index in 2016 and currently ranks 14th on poker’s All Time Money List.

So, how exactly did he manage to accomplish these feats? Here’s more on how this Colorado Springs native made a name for himself in professional poker.

Getting drawn into the online poker boom

In his early 20s, O’Dwyer caught ESPN’s live coverage of the 2003 WSOP. He revealed in an interview on the Winning the Game of Life podcast that viewing it ultimately inspired him to get into poker. That’s because that year’s Main Event is considered the most historic. Then-accountant and poker amateur Chris Moneymaker won its top prize, which was worth over $2.5 million. Because he was the first to do so by qualifying through an online satellite, his triumph illustrated how everyday Americans playing online poker could meet similar success.

The resulting “Moneymaker effect” sparked the early 2000s poker boom, which saw the card game hit the mainstream and led to the WSOP’s Main Event consistently attracting more players. American online poker picked up after 2003 as well, and, thanks to Moneymaker’s current efforts, it still continues to grow today. Now acting as the top ambassador for Americas Cardroom, which is considered the top poker site among the more than 60 million people across the country who play regularly, he’s inspired the creation of promotions like Moneymaker May-hem. Here, tournament winners receive a VIP package that flies them out to Las Vegas to compete in professional poker events and even meet Moneymaker himself.

The promotion aims to replicate the original impacts of the Moneymaker effect, which convinced not just O’Dwyer but also other major pros like Scott Davies and Evan Jarvis to play poker professionally full-time. In O’Dwyer’s case, he closely followed Moneymaker’s footsteps, similarly starting out with low-stakes home games before making his way to online poker websites.

Turning to live poker tournaments

After Moneymaker’s legendary WSOP win, O’Dwyer slowly began honing his poker skills online, finding the perfect opportunity to do so once he learned that Full Tilt Poker was looking for beta testers. After a while, he found that he could take advantage of deposit bonuses to increase his bankroll, causing him to play—and learn—for longer. “I spent a lot of my early days online grinding hard,” O’Dwyer told Card Player Magazine in 2012. “I had a few decent scores and even took third in the big Sunday tournament on Bodog.” Soon, he had over $14,000 in poker winnings to his name, prompting him to move to Las Vegas and try his hand at professional poker.

Here, he benefited from the support of a number of friends in the poker community, including Vivek Rajkumar. A skilled player in his own right—he currently boasts over $8 million in live earnings and sits in 2nd place on India’s All Time Money List—he financially supported O’Dwyer when he needed to participate in tournaments with higher buy-ins. Because of that, he used every opportunity he had to play as a learning experience. O’Dwyer’s efforts paid off. By 2007, he finished in the top five for the first time at a World Poker Finals event in Mashantucket, where he took home more than $33,000. He repeated that performance at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2010 with his first six-figure winnings, which exceeded $202,000.

However, O’Dwyer hit a rut after the Black Friday of US poker in 2011. The event saw the country’s biggest poker websites, including Full Tilt, being shut down by the FBI, which effectively froze the accounts of anyone who used them. O’Dwyer, who was down over $400,000 at the time, was hit particularly hard, but fortunately found comfort in WSOP winner Scott Seiver and poker and chess champion Isaac Haxton. The two pros similarly aided his participation in further tournaments and coached him on the ups and downs of having a professional poker career. Their support significantly helped boost O’Dwyer, who eventually became one of the biggest names to grace international poker tournaments.

Crushing the international poker circuit

After Black Friday, O’Dwyer had nowhere to go but up, and his successes have taken him around the world. He won his first-ever main event just a year later at the World Poker Tour in Denmark, as well as his first million-dollar at the European Poker Tour’s Grand Final in Montecarlo in 2013. By the time he competed at the Macau Poker Cup in 2015, he was skilled enough to beat Fedor Holz—a GGPoker ambassador who’s most famous for netting over $23 million before turning 24—and nab the top spot.

O’Dwyer is also active in prestigious tournaments, often playing at the same events as his inspiration, Chris Moneymaker, in the WSOP. Though he has yet to win a bracelet, he’s won roughly $222,000 from WSOP events held in the US and more than $450,000 from those in Europe. The Irish-American is also active online, where he displays his proficiency in multi-table tournaments that involve playing at two or more tables at once. In online events from the WSOP, PokerStars, and partypoker, he’s racked up over $7 million. Combined with the more than $46 million he’s won in live tournaments, it’s clear why he sits so comfortably on the All Time Money List.

Now living in Ireland, O’Dwyer continues to play poker at home and abroad, prioritizing high-stakes events like the Irish Poker Open and the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series. In doing so, he’s noted his preference for tournaments over media appearances in shows and live streams like Poker After Dark.

Ultimately, Steve O’Dwyer’s journey from Colorado Springs to the world’s biggest poker tournaments shows just how much can be accomplished with the right support system and lots of determination. “I don’t play poker for money,” he concluded. “What really gets me going isn’t necessarily the outcome, but making the correct decisions day in and day out, becoming the best player I can be.”

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John Mali Director of Media Relations

Director of Media Relations at AboutBoulder.com

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