'I want to win Mid-Major Player of the Year' - David Moses earns fifth WSOPC ring
An offbeat engineer living the van life before AI takes all our money.
David Moses isn’t hard to miss in a poker room. If he’s not wearing his fuzzy green Grinch hat, you’ll probably hear him before you see him. Moses’ table presence is much larger than his 170-pound frame suggests – he’s loud, funny and bounces around the room like a ping pong ball.
The chatty Carolinian switched to poker professionally later in life than most – he dove in full time in his mid-30s. An engineer by trade, Moses doesn’t enjoy gambling but sees the game as a means to an end.
Growing up with meager beginnings
“I grew up poor as a kid, so the idea of even gambling $5 didn’t appeal to me,” Moses said. “I still hate gambling; I don’t enjoy it at all. I wish poker were more like a test, where if you get five questions wrong, then you’re out.”
I caught up with Moses at the Horseshoe Tunica during the World Series of Poker Circuit stop after he won his fifth Circuit ring.
“You can play very well and get your brains beat in for months on end,” he said. “By people who don’t give a second thought to this game outside of when they’re playing a hand. I think about the game night and day; I eat, sleep and drink it.”
For someone who declares he dislikes gambling, Moses’ career tells a different story. He has $2.1 million in tournament earnings, a WSOPC ring for each finger and a WSOP bracelet
Embracing van life
Moses isn’t exaggerating when he says the game consumes him, he travels the Circuit in his custom RV. “I bought a ’98 Chevy turtle top van and I had $15,000 budgeted to build it out,” said Moses. “But then I won the Crazy Eights event for nearly a million. So, instead of building it on a 20-year-old platform, I bought a new Transit van.”
The idea was that he’d stay in the RV, specifically at Cherokee and Seminole Hard Rock stops because of the price of rooms. At some spots he’ll stay on site in the hotel but travels state to state in his RV.
“It allows me to stop and rest in between places,” Moses said. “You’ve got to keep your expenses low as a professional. Cherokee and Seminole have very secure parking lots, they’re safe.”
Moses’ wife does not share his love for the van. “She hates it,” he said bluntly. “She thinks it’s a glorified tent and she’s much more of a hotel gal. She understands and appreciates why I have it – I’ve spent two of the four months this year in it.”
Making it the hard way
Even in the wild world of poker, Moses can be a square peg in a room of round holes. He’s 42 years old but looks a decade younger. He doesn’t wear stress on his face like most fathers who had a kid before he was old enough to gamble.
He has two sons – ages 23 and 16 – and worked two jobs while going to school at night. He worked in a machine shop for experience and delivered pizzas for money. That’s when he discovered poker.
He and his friends played $5 winner-take-all Sit & Goes with loose change. “I won $65 my first night playing when I realized it was hard to make a pair in this game,” said Moses. “I was hesitant to even play because I hated the idea of gambling from growing up so poor.”
“I realized that night I can get paid at this game by being smart and not having to rely on a boss who makes decisions on my life,” he said. “Most jobs that are financially rewarding require someone who decides to see if their talent is worth a reward.”
“That’s a big parlay, right?” he questioned. “Most times the person who can get you more money is two or three levels removed from you. You make your boss look good, and they theirs – that’s how corporate America works.”
“Poker is a meritocracy, you get financially rewarded by doing better than other people,” said Moses. “I wanted to make money for being smart and not having filters funnel my success.”
Moses went out the week after winning his first night and bought a poker book. “It was $30 and I figured that there was at least enough information to win me $30, so it was worth it,” he said.
There’s a very good chance that if he didn’t run white hot with good pre- and post-flop distribution that first night, he might not be here. But he stuck with the game, started playing more and he took to it naturally with his data-driven mind.
He graduated from school and landed a job as an engineer with GE and played poker recreationally. The company’s PTO policy gave Moses plenty of time to play regional main events and Las Vegas in the summer.
Strapped to a rocket
“I got laid off in June 2020 and there were no other jobs around,” Moses said. “Everything was closed and I kind of became a poker pro by default. Then in 2021, it took off.”
And by taking off, he meant winning the 2021 WSOP Crazy Eights event for $888,888. It was a windfall for him and put wind in his sails to play the next few years. He’s earned 24 five-figure scores and four rings since his bracelet win.
“I think poker is a really good way to make a lot of money – if you’re good at it,” Moses said. “My goal is to make as much as I can while it’s viable and that’s why I’m grinding.”
Moses is afraid his days are numbered for live poker from the combination of AI and augmented eyewear. “As software and hardware progress, I’m pretty sure anything you use your brain to do, AI will start to replace,” he said. “You’ll always need someone who can turn a wrench, but in accounting or data – it’s time to retire.”
Moses is an admitted homebody and when he’s not on the road playing, there’s no place he'd rather be than on the couch next to his wife. “She’s the center of my peace,” he said. “When I finish a stop, I just want to watch movies on the couch.”
“It’s when I’m the calmest,” he said as a throwaway line. But when asked if his mind is always going a mile a minute, he said, “Unfortunately, yes.”
“I’ve always been the guy that needed to be happy at work, even before poker was a profession,” said Moses. “I needed to take time off to be with her, but I didn’t take any time for myself.”
Moses wears flip flops in the cold, looks like a natural with an offbeat hat and rocks a wild beard – the official uniform of a pot-smoking poker player. Moses gets approached by players looking to find weed more often than he’d like. He laughed, “Yeah, almost all people assume I smoke, but I smoked like seven times in my life before poker. It always made me paranoid.”
“It didn’t mix well for me,” he said. “I could feel my brain slowing down instantly and I think I’d be too okay with losing in that mindset. I love all my fellow humans and hope they win, but as a competitor, it’s a disadvantage. You need to want to destroy the people at your table.”
While he’s gearing up for a second bracelet run in a few weeks, he has eyes set on a larger goal. “I want to win GPI Mid-Major Player of the Year in 2025,” Moses stated. “This year is a full-court blast, I tweeted on January 2nd that I was going for the title.” At the time of writing, Moses was in 12th place – well within reach of the leader.
“I also said I wasn’t going to talk in tournaments for the first four months and we all know I failed miserably at that,” he laughed. “I’m in full grind mode, I’m in the zone and running fairly well. I feel like I have a good shot and I’m going to go for it.”
All photos courtesy of 8131 Media.