Johnny Moss is a poker legend and was one of the first poker players who made poker popular amongst the mainstream internet poker crowd. Johnny competed in all of the early WSOP events and when he played poker this was the only circuit out there for poker. Johnny grew up in Dallas, Texas and spent most of his childhood learning how to play cards.

When Johnny Moss was just a teenager he spent time working in the saloons making sure that everyone was playing the poker games fairly without cheating. Johnny was taught at a young age all the ways to cheat in poker at that time so he was well equipped for the job at the saloon. It was a dangerous job at the time, but someone needed to do it and Johnny stepped up to the plate. He also didn’t really mind working there because he was able to watch other players and learn the strategies they used.

Johnny has won 9 WSOP bracelets and finished in the money 25 times in his career which is pretty impressive because there were hardly any events to play back when he played. He won the main event bracelet at the WSOP in years 1970, 1971 and 1974. He has also done well in other poker games on the WSOP Satellites circuits and won many bracelets in games other then Holdem.

Johnny Moss was known in his early days as a rounder, a rounder is someone who, before sites like PokerStars.com came around, travelled the country looking for any gambling action that they could find in the saloons. Moss traveled around the USA with some of his poker buddies and made a lot of money for the time. Later in his career Moss started getting called the “Grand Old Man of Poker” because he was basically there since it became regulated and played for more then most poker players do today.

Throughout Moss’s long career as a FullTilt poker player he won $680,000 which you might think is pretty minuscule compared to how much the players earn today on sites like PokerStars.com, but back when he played this amount of money was a ton. Nowadays you see the winner of the main event winning nearly $10 million, but back when Moss played the tournaments were way smaller and the prize pool therefore was also a lot smaller. Although when Moss played there weren’t that many players the skill level of the players who did play was exceptional. Players like Doyle Brunson were some of Moss’s competition in the early days so it wasn’t like it was easy for Moss to win his 9 WSOP bracelets.

Johnny Moss has been inducted to the Poker of Hall of Fame decades ago and with a HOF with only a select few poker players inducted it’s quite the achievement for Johnny. He has been in the HOF since 1979 after pioneering poker and there isn’t anyone else more deserving then Moss to be in the Poker HOF. I personally haven’t seen him play at PokerStar.net or seen his style of poker play so I can’t comment on that, but judging by his poker resume he definitely was one of the greatest players of all-time.