Chris Moorman and Katie Lindsay continue to enjoy the 2020 WSOP Online grind - some more than others. (888 photo)

Over the course of the 2020 World Series of Poker, PocketFives will be checking in with Chris Moorman and Katie Lindsay as they chase down WSOP glory. This is Episode 2 of The House of Moorman.

Katie Lindsay wants to get it on the record early.

With her three cashes through the first nine events of the 2020 World Series of Poker Online, she’s still holding the lead over her husband Chris Moorman, who has just two.

Not that anybody is keeping score.

That second cash came on July 4, when Chris finished 124th in Event #4 ($500 NLHE Super Turbo) for $795.82. It wasn’t pretty.

“I had to fold to min-cash with three big blinds,” Chris joked.

That min-cash was just part of their low-key July 4th festivities. They picked up some lobster rolls from a local cafe that just opened down the street from their Las Vegas home and hung out by the pool while grinding the fastest structured tournament on the 2020 schedule.

“It was weird though because it didn’t feel like a turbo at all and then all of a sudden it turned into a huge crapshoot and no on had more than ten bigs on the bubble,” Chris said.

Once that was over, they hung out on their dock and watched some of the fireworks that other area residents were launching into the sky.

Sunday was a good day for both of them on the tables. Katie finished fourth in the $320 WSOP.com Online Championship Sunday Special – not to be confused with the WSOP Online events – for $17,497.35 and Chris took down a $75 buy-in Knockout event. He almost didn’t register for it, knowing it’s usually a smaller event on Sundays but decided to add it to the other events he was grinding on Sunday. The win was worth nearly $6,800 but it lasted well into the night.

“I’d rather win a smaller tournament then come second or third in a slightly bigger one just because it’s a nice feeling at the end to at least win it,” Chris said. If I had known how long it was going to go, I’m not sure I would have registered it in the first place.”

Both Katie and Chris have been surprised to see unfamiliar names walking away with bracelets through the opening week and half of the schedule.

“Everyone I know in Vegas is playing it and I’ve not really had one friend at a final table yet,” Chris said. All of that was supposed to change in Thursday’s $1,000 Six Max NLHE event. “Less recreational players like playing Six Max, it’s a slightly higher buy-in.”

That’s not at all what happened. 70-year-old Ron ‘MacDaddy15’ MacMillen, playing online poker for the first time in his life, beat out 1,026 other entries to win the bracelet and $188,214. The winning moment was captured on video and shared on social media.

“That video is amazing. I feel like that’s what it’s all about,” Chris said. “It brings out the magic of the World Series. It’s good to see.”

The success that Chris and Katie have had at the tables the past weeks is made all the more impressive by the fact that they’ve been dealing with some early-rising, noisy house guests. For the past month, renovators have been re-doing the three bathrooms inside their house, arriving each day at 8 am – but they wanted to start earlier.

“They tried to start at 7. They come one day and I said ‘You can’t start at 7’. If we’re playing poker until one in the morning, it’s too early,” Katie said.

The pair have developed a routine though to help keep them sane through the renovations. Katie gets to get out of the house in the morning to get a workout in and Chris stays behind to answer any questions that the contractors have. Once Katie gets home, Chris heads out to play pickleball or golf before coming back home to start the day.

Fortunately for the pair, the contractors are usually out of the house before each day’s bracelet event begins. Moorman, a former #1 on PocketFives, is quite happy returning to his roots as an online grinder while live poker is on hiatus.

“I enjoy (online) more. You can’t replicate the feeling of making a live final table, but it’s just so hard,” Chris said, one year after winning a Wynn $1,600 No Limit Hold’em event for $107,590. “Live poker is quite draining for me and mentally sort of challenging, whereas online if you have a bad day, you can just come back the next day and reset.”

It’s the opposite for Katie. Playing events in Las Vegas throughout the year means running into the same group of people over and over again. The tourists and recreational players that populate WSOP bracelet events each summer offer a totally different dynamic and it has nothing to do with how soft the fields become.

“I love talking to people. I love meeting people. That’s why the World Series is just one of my favorites,” Katie said. “Sitting next to a 75-year-old Navy vet – my dad was in the Navy – and talking about where they were stationed and I just love stuff like that. It’s so cool hearing people’s stories. They’re excitement of just being there and you just feed off that energy.”

“I miss it so much.”