Against conventional wisdom, poker craze continues to grow

LAS VEGAS -- Doyle Brunson, the 72-year-old legend who made a living playing poker before that kind of thing was cool, vividly recalls the conversation he had decades ago with another forefather of his sport.

"We were sitting there at the first World Series and Benny Binion told me, 'This thing is really going to take off. Some day, we're going to have 100 people here,'" Brunson said.

Binion underestimated a wee bit.

The main event at this year's World Series of Poker includes a whopping 8,000-plus entrants -- a field so big, there's no way to get them all in Binion's old-school downtown casino, where a group of 38 made up the first WSOP field in 1970.

"Much more lucrative than I ever could have imagined," said Brunson, one of dozens of poker players who have become stars, complete with their own publicists and Web sites, in the wake of a poker boom the last few years.

Many who descended upon Las Vegas for the start of the main event Friday -- cards and chips started moving at noon at the Rio Hotel and Casino -- shelled out $10,000 of their own money for a chance at the grand prize, expected to eclipse $11 million this year. Others made it through satellite tournaments at casinos or on the internet, or won drawings, or found friends to help them front the entry fee.

They are men and women, young and old, famous and unknown, some doing it for fun and some trying to make a living out of it. They are jumping on the bandwagon of a craze that, in many ways, runs counter to what Americans love.

"If you'd told me 10 years ago that one of the biggest growing new TV genres of the future was going to be people playing cards, I'd have told you you were crazy," said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse. "It seems incredibly boring. It goes against every instinct of how TV works."

Nonetheless, TV has propelled a boom that has compelled thousands to quit their day jobs. Nothing new there. Still, it doesn't quite make sense -- how, in an era of instant information, this "sport" can be so popular despite TV presentations that are aired weeks after the events are over, then repeated endlessly.

Gambling, and the idea of winning something for nothing, always has had allure. But of all the games that legally can be played in a casino -- blackjack, craps, roulette -- none is more time consuming and more of a grind than poker, especially no-limit Texas Hold 'Em -- the engine upon which the World Series of Poker is based.

In the game, each player is dealt two cards, face down. A round of betting ensues. Then three community cards -- the flop -- are dealt in the middle of the table. Another round of betting. Then, another card, called the turn, is revealed, followed by another round of betting. Finally, the last card, the river, is revealed and one more round of betting completes the action. In the no-limit version of Hold 'Em, any player can put all his chips in at any time to either double his stack or go home.

ESPN, which televises the World Series of Poker, only shows the top 5 percent of hands. Most of the rest are boring, involve lots of folding and no real action.

Still, there's a big difference between watching and playing. And it brings up the question: Exactly how did this slow, tiresome and difficult grind of a game capture the imagination of so many?

"People enjoy strategy games," explained 21-year-old Ian Johns, who quit his job at his family's bowling alley in the state of Washington to take up professional poker. "People enjoy competition. Tournaments are taking off quite a bit because of the competition and the huge prize pools they have. It's just like any other game, really, except this has money and the gambling aspect to get the blood going."

---

Hellmuth eliminated

Phil Hellmuth made his traditional grand entrance into the main event -- late, of course, and with lots of fanfare. Not long after sitting down, the 10-time winner at the World Series of Poker was out.

"Horrendous, horrendous luck," Hellmuth said Saturday after being knocked out in only six hours.

Stars eliminated Saturday included model Shannon Elizabeth and actor Brad Garrett from "Everyone Loves Raymond." Professional golfer Paul Azinger was still playing through the first few hours.

"I'm intimidated," Azinger said. "I just have to look at it as, I'm going to try to win my table, not the entire tournament."

-- AP