Darvin Moon, 2009 WSOP Main Event Runner-Up, Dies at 56

Darvin Moon, the runner-up finisher in the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, has died after suffering complications from surgery at the age of 56. Moon became the central figure of that year’s final table after arriving at the second-ever “November Nine” with the chip lead, though he finally lost to the back-from-the-brink heater that made Joe Cada that year’s WSOP World Champion.

Moon’s medical condition and official cause of death have not been publicly released, though word of his passing was brought to the poker world by Todd Anderson, the founder of the Heartland Poker Tour and the creator of “Poker Night in America,” a cash-game poker show often televised from Pennsylvania on which Moon, a native of neighboring West Virginia, occasionally participated.

Anderson had become close friends over the years with Moon and his wife, Wendy, and Tweeted the sad news of Moon’s death late on Saturday, September 19:

Moon was an amateur poker player who won a local club series to win his $10,000 buy-in to the Main Event, and he parlayed that buy-in into a mammoth 3 payday that ultimately represented all but about $28,000 of his rec6orded live-event earnings. Nonetheless, the quiet and thoughtful Moon, a logger by trade, became something of a folk hero in West Virginia for his deep run at the Rio.

During that run, Moon famously declined multiple sponsorship deals during his Main Event run in an era when such deals were virtually the status quo for every finalist. Eventually, though, Anderson befriended Moon, who in 2011 accepted a deal to represent Anderson’s fledgling Heartland Poker Tour, in addition to appearing on the PNIA broadcasts in later years.

Those who got to know Moon, who generally shied away from the spotlight, relayed that despite his quiet nature, he was a warm and direct man who displayed high integrity in all his dealings. Famed former WSOP and PNIA official Nolan Dalla is among those who have written moving tributes to Moon after learning of Moon’s untimely passing just weeks before his 57th birthday.

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