|
 These
days poker – specifically Texas holdem, the best version of the
venerable game – is enjoying an unexpected renaissance among Americans
in general, and twenty-somethings in particular. It is newly ubiquitous
on television: The World Series of Poker, a single event which took
place last May, is replayed on ESPN with obsessive frequency 10 months
after it ended. The World Poker Tour, another set of tournaments located
in casinos around the country, got picked up by the Travel Channel last
year. In the fall, Bravo introduced its heavily promoted "Celebrity
Poker Showdown" program, betting on viewers being riveted by a
fifth-street showdown between Timothy Busfield and Coolio. But perhaps
anecdotal evidence speaks louder: Three years ago, when I was a
sophomore at Cornell University, there wasn't a game to be had. By the
time, I graduated, I could choose from several different games every
night of the week.
Every generation gambles, but how they gamble says something about
the spirit of the age. Why are yuppies-in-the-making suddenly interested
in poker, a game most of us grew up associating with either paneled
basements and cheap cigars or Rococo Old West saloons filled with
bolo-tied card sharps? The answer may be that the popular image of the
game has undergone a subtle recasting – one with a great attraction to
ironic youngsters like me who find in the game the same slightly
glamorous, slightly seedy, go-getter spirit that characterized the
Internet boom. It makes sense that today's college-educated young
adults, especially young men, choose
Texas holdem
poker. Strategy-oriented, individualistic and embedded in a
nice masculine mythology,
Texas holdem
poker is the perfect game for the revenge-of-the-nerds
generation looking to square their intelligence with their inner
maleness.
Holdem Poker first appeared in the United States in the
1820s, brought to New Orleans by French immigrants who called the game
poque. It traveled up the Mississippi River and spread throughout the
country, soon becoming an underground national pastime, baseball for the
unathletic. As the century turned, poker maintained its popularity, but
lost its phenomenon status. Though television shows like "Maverick" in
1957 and the 1971 mini-series "The Gambler" later mythologized the poker
players of the good old days – the dandified 1840s gambler, kind to
women and merciless to cheaters – no one looked for glory or drama in
modern poker anymore. To callow youth like me, the game looked like just
another thing that Babbitty men did, like the Rotary club, or golf.
People's dads played poker.
And then we started playing
Texas holdem
poker, too. Like everything else with my generation,
technological innovation helped enable our new hobby. By the late '90s
and early 2000s, dozens of online casinos had sprung up, allowing the
Internet to tap its full potential as a 24-hour gaming paradise. Free
from the annoying sanctions of the U.S. Penal Code, these offshore
virtual Monte Carlos offered interested parties the opportunity to wager
'round the clock. Especially popular were online poker rooms, where you
could play – for money, real or fake – against all comers. For many
would-be players, the fear of looking like confused novices in front of
a room full of old hands used to keep them from the tables. Now, the
online poker rooms provide a convenient place to learn and refine the
game at home with no one watching. More recent arrivals are the
Texas holdem
poker blogs shilling for their favorite sites, swooning over
their favorite pros, and telling their stories about the hands that got
away.
Televised poker is also a lot better than it used to be. For too
long, TV executives were unsure how to treat their poker coverage,
cramming it into late-night time slots on cable sports networks. This
was odd, as poker belongs in the same dubious semi-sport category as
eating contests or spelling bees. Not only did it require no physical
prowess, but due to prolonged exposure to tobacco, free drinks and
fluorescent lights, many of the game's finest players appear to be
chronic palpitators and arrythmiacs. Little wonder that it never got
good ratings on ESPN or the "Wide World of Sports."
But with the Travel Channel, formerly the repository of such
stinkers as "Busch Gardens Revealed" and "Incredible Vacation Videos,"
Texas holdem
poker met its perfect match. The station has been the
prime propagator and beneficiary of the poker craze with its "World
Poker Tour" viewing block, which sends viewers casino-hopping around the
world to a new poker tournament each week, open to all comers for a
modest entrance fee. In its breathless approximation of legitimate
sports coverage, the production is hilariously WWFesque in a way that
appeals perfectly to ironic 20-somethings: lots of gaudy money shots, a
blonde "sideline reporter" who conducts exit interviews with ousted
players, and "expert" announcers coming off as campy parodies of real
sportscasters, with their nicknaming and jargonese. Well-placed cameras
reveal each player's hole cards, allowing viewers at home to revel in
omniscience even as they attempt to follow the thought processes of the
bettors and sharpen their own skills at home.
Indeed, some of the best self-taught
Texas holdem
players, variants of 1990s computer nerds, are finding success
in the pro poker circuit. The reigning World Series champion is a
chubby, eagle-eyed 28-year-old Tennessee accountant with the Dickensian
name of Chris Moneymaker. Moneymaker had learned the game just three
years earlier and perfected his tricks by playing Internet poker
obsessively. The 2003 World Series was his first professional event, and
he beat hundreds of long-time professionals, walking away with $2.5
million, and the near-worshipful admiration of millions of delusional
amateurs like myself. |
