Rep's Son Goes 'Nuts' In Online Poker Game
Jim Jr. is caught on tape screaming, "I had the nuts the whole time!"
May 30, 2008— -- Jim Moran had the nuts the whole time.
Not the longtime Democratic congressman from Virginia, Rep. Jim Moran -- but his 39-year-old son, Jim Jr., a Washington, D.C. area regional manager for Dominos Pizza and online poker aficionado.
How do you know Moran had the nuts? His pal posted a YouTube video of him screaming, "I had the nuts the whole time!" (In this case, "the nuts" are a pair of queens. The term is used in poker to refer to an unbeatable hand.)
Moran Jr.'s YouTube moment is thanks to his childhood friend, Bruce Ryan, who posted the clip as a publicity stunt to attract attention -- and hopefully funding -- for his planned documentary on poker. Ryan, a real estate agent and aspiring filmmaker, previously worked on a documentary on adult kickball that did not receive wide exposure.
His three-and-a-half minute YouTube video, unsubtly titled, "Congressman's Son Goes Crazy Playing Poker," could fare better. It features Moran Jr. variously screaming, pointing at his computer screen, whooping and hollering, "I worked you!" while advancing in an online poker tournament. (Despite obtaining a top ranking, he eventually lost the competition, Ryan told ABC News.)
"I worked that guy!" the lawmaker's offspring shouts after winning a key hand. Then he turns to his computer screen. "I worked you! I worked you! I worked you! You thought I was being a wuss, but I had the nuts the whole time! That's what time it is! You got a watch?" -- he points energetically to his wrist -- "Cuz that's what time it is!"
His father's congressional office declined to comment for this story.
"He's probably, IQ-wise, a genius," Ryan said of his friend Jim, "at least on paper."
"I'm really good at math, and I know when people are lying to me," said Moran, explaining his skills as a poker player. He told ABC News that when he first saw Ryan's video he thought, "'That makes me look like an idiot,'" but Ryan assured him when people watched it online, they would think it was "cool."
The video has already attracted the attention of Roll Call, a D.C. newspaper which covers Congress -- not exactly Variety, but sure to boost the clip's viewership.
Despite his friend's hope for publicity, however, Moran said he refused to talk to the paper's reporter, because he said another Roll Call scribe had misquoted him several years ago in comments he made about former Rep. Stan Parris, R-Va., whom his father defeated to win his seat in Congress.
"[Parris] made fun of me on a school trip when I was in third grade, and got the whole class to laugh at me, and I've hated him with a passion ever since," Moran Jr. explained. When Roll Call ran his quote about the man, Moran said, they added an adjective which made his words sound harsher. "I got in trouble."
Jim Jr. shares with his lawmaker dad an appreciation for online gambling -- his father is currently supporting a bill to protect online poker and other wagering from government regulation. The two also share a taste for colorful hyperbole. Soon after Moran Sr. was re-elected in 2006, he told a crowd in Virginia he was looking forward to chairing a powerful appropriations subcommittee, vowing to "earmark the [expletive] out of" bills that came through his panel. He explained later the comment was in jest.