All Gas, No Brakes: ‘Texas’ Mike Is On A Mission

It was the talk of the summer of 2022. The guy who won the $1,500 limit hold’em event along with a cool $145,000 had never played limit hold’em before. He then took that cash and bought himself into the $100,000 event, despite never having played a high roller before, and finished fifth for $420,000.

Who was this unknown, a player who went by ‘Texas’ Mike?

“I’m a parlay guy, so I figured I’d go for it, go big.”

A fitting explanation for a man with “all gas, no brakes” quoted on his Twitter profile.

In the three years since his debut to the high-stakes world, Mike Moncek has turned heads with his fearless approach and racked up an impressive collection of bracelets, rings, and trophies, as well as more than $5.2 million in cashes, and a growing highlight reel of viral livestreamed poker hands.

But appreciate Moncek while you can, because it turns out the poker world is only borrowing him for a little while.

Poker Success Follows Tragedy And Heartache

Despite the ‘Texas’ nickname, which comes from his time at the University of Texas, Moncek was actually born and raised in Chicago, which is where he also earned his MBA from Loyola University. You can always spot him at the table wearing a burnt orange UT hat to rep his alma mater, however, as evidenced by all of his photos in this article.

At just 32 years old, Moncek wasn’t even a teen when the poker boom hit, but it still had a major impact on him.

“Poker started with Moneymaker, just like everybody else,” Moncek recalled. “I was 11, and I would watch with my dad. That’s one of the things we bonded over, watching poker on ESPN. He wasn’t really a poker player before that, but the next year he went and played in the main event. He ended up losing with kings to Daniel Alaei’s aces, and I don’t think he ever played it again.”

While Mike Sr. might not have enjoyed his unceremonious $10,000 donation to the sharks in Vegas, the younger Mike couldn’t wait to get in the game. He was in graduate school when he got his chance, playing cards on the weekends in rooms in the greater Chicago area.

There were back-to-back final tables at the Chicago Poker Classic, and then in February of 2019 he took down the $400 no-limit event at the WSOP Circuit stop in Milwaukee, earning the first of his four rings.

Then, Moncek’s world was completely turned upside down, and not because of a global pandemic.

“My dad was pretty excited about my success,” he said. “I was playing an event at the Horseshoe (in Hammond, near Chicago) and he asked me for an update. I was actually chip leader on day 1, so I told him, and he sent back a thumbs up.”

“On dinner break, I got a call and learned that he had a heart attack while driving and crashed. I left immediately, just leaving the chips behind, but my dad was gone before I got to the hospital. He was only 53.”

“My mom was in the car as well. We almost lost her, but we got very lucky. His foot was pressed against the gas pedal and he was unconscious at the wheel. The car was still accelerating but stopped after hitting a construction trailer on the side of the road at around 40 miles per hour. She barely survived and was in the hospital for a few weeks. We had to keep pushing the funeral service back.”

Moncek and his father were very close, with he and his brother being groomed to take over the family business, a successful wholesaler for packaging products. With his passing, however, the company was put up for sale.

“It was really tough,” Moncek admitted. “I didn’t want to sell it, but it was his wish that the family, my mother and siblings, be set and taken care of if something happened to him. I was excited about the company and learning more so my brother and I could take it over, but we didn’t have that option. Of course, you couldn’t really sell a company during COVID, so we did keep it going for a few years.”

“I want to get back into that business, but we had to sign a five-year non-compete. So, during the non-compete, and on days when I feel okay, I’ve just been playing poker. The last message I got from my dad was a thumbs up about a tournament update, which I kind of took as a sign. It was telling me to keep pursuing poker.”

One In The Chamber

When you watch him play, you might say Moncek is “all heart,” never afraid to make the gutsy play. It’s an apt description, given his cardiomyopathy diagnosis.

“My heart is four times too big,” he explained. “In the last two years, I found out that I have heart failure. I have a blood clot in my heart, which is why I’m now on blood thinners. This summer they said the bottom of my heart is dead because I have a trapped artery.”

“There’s one surgery, a full on, open-heart surgery, that they said had a 10% chance of making me feel better. The other option is a heart transplant, which I’m eligible for now, but the surgeon said he would rather do the 10% surgery than a transplant. That shows you just how much they don’t like to do transplants. Kind of, ‘Get what you can out of this heart, first.’”

A family tragedy, serious health concerns, and a complete upheaval of his professional life have given Moncek a Carpe Diem outlook on life.

“When your dad dies at 53 and you have your own health problems, there’s definitely a bit of a YOLO (you only live once) mentality.”

It’s that approach that got Moncek noticed in the first place, putting up almost all of his bracelet-earning winnings at the WSOP to enter a $100,000 buy-in high roller.

“I was going to leave town after a few days, but then I won the first tournament I played. It felt like a freeroll. I’m a parlay guy, so I figured I’d go for it, go big. Plus, it was a small field, so a good shot at another bracelet. I wanted to win Player of the Year, and that’s now my goal every summer.”

He closed out 2022 with a fourth WSOP Circuit ring, and then the next summer he returned to Las Vegas and took down the $5,000 no-limit hold’em/pot-limit Omaha event for his second bracelet and $535,000. Moncek also finished third in the $10,000 razz event and in 2023 took third in the $25,000 H.O.R.S.E. event.

After two runner-up showings at the Poker Masters, Moncek picked up his biggest score with a min-cash in the $500,000 Triton Million Invitational in the Bahamas for $1,200,000.

In February, Moncek put together a run of first, second, and third in the PokerGO Cup, narrowly missing out on player of the series honors to a historic run by Joey Weissman. Then a month later, he was a few unfortunate runouts away from taking down the inaugural Super High Roller Bowl Mixed Games event, settling for a runner-up finish and $725,000.

But despite his very quick rise in the high roller world, Moncek remains very humble about his accomplishments.

“Sometimes with success, I feel like I’m just getting lucky because I know all these guys are better than me, especially in the high roller scene and at the PokerGO studio,” he admitted. “These guys are all pros, I’m just a recreational player trying to compete. They’re studied and know what to do in almost every situation, but I’m problem solving the entire time on the spot. I know how much I’m guessing, and I know they’re not.”

“But that’s also the fun of it, and why it appeals to me. I could go study solvers, but that wouldn’t be fun. I like problem solving, and being a little unorthodox is kind of exciting and can throw everything else off at the table. Luckily there is a lot of luck and variance in poker, so I’ve been able to win sometimes, but I know how much better all these guys are.”

While he may not be running solvers and consulting charts in his time off, Moncek is clearly a quick study and is often able to find the right play using his instincts and well-timed aggression.

“I’ve gotten better by just learning from what other people are doing around me. That’s why PokerGO is so great, because you can just see what all the best players are doing. And if you make a mistake you can watch it and avoid it in the future. You can even ask friends, ‘Hey, what did I do wrong in this hand?’”

“That being said, if you keep playing high rollers, maybe it’s a little irresponsible to not figure out how to play poker at some point.”

Going Viral

Moncek isn’t afraid to put up big money outside of tournaments, either, bringing seven figures to the Hustler Casino Live Million Dollar Cash Game. It was there that he made headlines for a massive bluff, somehow pushing Chalie Hook off of 8 7 on a board reading A 5 4 6 A holding nothing but 10 2.

“Once I saw I had ‘the Doyle,’ I wasn’t going to dog it. I thought, ‘This is going to look so stupid if it doesn’t work. But if it does work, then there’s nothing cooler.’ I get a rush out of it.”

The week wouldn’t end well, with Moncek losing a $2.2 million coinflip with pocket tens against A Q to fellow high-stakes sicko Alan Keating.

“I was already down a lot for the day, playing two horrible hands against Brandon Steven. Then I had a hand against Keating with a straight against his flush. I wasn’t happy with how I was playing, and I wasn’t feeling well. And then we got to that hand, which ended up being a flip because he is sick enough to call it off with A-Q suited. His call is sicker than my jam. I’m not supposed to jam, but his call is even crazier,” he explained. “I appreciated the ace on the flop rather than the river.”

How did he shrug off losing one of the biggest pots in poker history? By flying to Vegas and jumping into a tournament the next day.

“To be flipping was fair. If I get it in good and happen to lose, oh well, good game. But if I messed something up or could have done something differently, that’s what bothers me.”

When the cameras are on, Moncek feels an obligation to be entertaining to those watching at home, often playing the vast majority of the hands he is dealt. At one session at the Lodge in Texas, he had a VPIP (voluntarily put money into pot) of nearly 90%.

“People are taking time out of their busy lives to watch other people play poker. I think we should try and make it fun,” he said. “That’s what I try to do on streams. I don’t want to be a nit. I mean, I’m not a nit when the cameras are off, either, but if people are literally watching others play poker, it should be exciting. You have to make moves.”

“Granted, it can get very expensive if you’re making moves in a million-dollar game.”
Moncek most recently went viral for a 2-7 single draw lowball hand he played at the final table of the Super High Roller Bowl, picking off a bluff from Yuri Dzivielevski with a pair of fours. Dzivielevski had been making a big snow play with two pair, and Moncek’s unlikely call earned him a lot of respect from the poker community.

“I know Yuri is a good player capable of snowing with the right hands, and that he wasn’t afraid to go for it. I was hoping he had a snow and not a seven or eight right off the bat. Once he jammed river it just felt very polarized and it seemed like as good of an opportunity to knock out a far superior opponent as I was going to get.”

But would he have made the call if the cameras weren’t rolling?

“Playing on the live stream didn’t change my play at the final table, but for that particular hand the hero call aspect of it definitely appealed to me. I was risking looking like an idiot, but if I called correctly it could be a legendary call. Definitely high risk-high reward, but luckily it worked out.”

The Beat Goes On

Did Moncek get his fearlessness from his diagnosis, or was it always there?

“I think it was always there. My family was always very competitive, even with board games. A game of Monopoly or Risk at our house could get more intense than some of these $100,000 high rollers.”

Still, just being at the table does pose some real-life risk for Moncek, given the heart-pounding excitement that comes with huge bluffs and seven-figure flips.

“Sometimes I start to feel bad, but I have a big stack. So, what do I do? I can’t exactly leave. So, tournaments can be a little risky. My blood flow will slow down and my hands will get cold. I get chest pains. I’m worried about having a heart attack at the table, especially when I’m playing on a stream. It’s not fun feeling sick in public, let alone on camera.”

“But while stress probably doesn’t help, when I’m playing and feeling okay, I’m not thinking about my heart. It’s nice to be able to take my mind off it for a while.”

The WSOP has 100 bracelet events scheduled for the summer, and Moncek estimates he will play in about 85 of them as he chases the POY award.

“That could be a little low,” he added. “In the small ones I’ll be trying to build a stack really quick, sometimes even going all in blind towards the end of re-entry. I’m playing every event, low to high, no-limit to mixed, just trying to maximize my chances at a bracelet.”

There are about two years left on Moncek’s non-compete clause, and depending on his health and other business opportunities, he plans on making the most of his time in the poker world.

“I’m trying to get as much fulfillment out of poker as I can. That’s why I’m playing everything, whether it’s the high rollers or $1-$3. I don’t care what the stakes are, as long as it’s something competitive and the people are fun.” ♠

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*Photos by PokerGO