TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

While the Palm Beach Princess rolls gently in 4-foot swells about 5 miles from shore, Wendy Shephard is on a roll of her own. Over at the poker table, she's sitting pretty with a full house, three sevens over two kings.

But Ray DeCario knows he's holding a bigger full house. He pushes his pile of chips -- the entire pile -- into the center of the table. "All in," he says.

Wendy pushes her chips -- every last one -- across the felt. "All in," she says. And just like that, it's all over for Wendy.

Welcome to no-limit Texas Holdem poker.

Wendy, 33, a golf pro by day, and Ray, 57, a retired maintenance worker, are two of 82 players trying to score part of the $9,400 in prize money in the Princess' regular Monday night poker tournament. The poker tourneys are the hottest thing going on the former Love Boat. But the players aren't looking for love. They're looking for action. They each put up $50 for the thrills, stress and cutthroat competition of the hottest game in the USA: Texas Holdem.

Not that there's anything new about Americans' loving poker. It's been America's indoor game of choice since it first made its way up the Mississippi with French traders more than two centuries ago. Presidents played it -- Harding, Truman, Kennedy. GIs played it in muddy foxholes. Sailors played it deep in the bowels of destroyers and battleships. College lads have played it with Mom and Dad's money for a century or so.

Didn't we all, at a tender age, have an aunt, older brother or uncle who imparted his or her poker skills after Saturday night dinner, usually at the cost of all the pennies in the novice's piggy bank? Stud poker, high-low poker, deuces-wild poker. All woven into the American fabric.

If you own and watch a TV, you know that Texas Holdem is now a big weave in that fabric. You'll find it on the Travel Channel, on ESPN, televised live from the Bellagio in Las Vegas, from France, from Atlantic City. You'll find the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker.

Some TV reviewers attribute the popularity of televised Holdem to the fact that it's the ultimate survival game: Money, all or nothing money. Real people playing for real money, sometimes as much as $4 million. That's real real money.

Hold 'em has taken hold in college dorms and on the Internet, where poker sites abound. You'll even find it at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. At UltimateBet, you can find a thousand or more tables going on a Saturday night, with several thousand players parked for hours at those cyber tables.

Click on a player's screen name, and you'll learn his country of origin: Sweden, the United States, Britain, Belgium, a regular United Nations of poker. One player from Vatican City has a most unholy screen name. They all come to play, some for pennies, some for "play" money, some for tens of thousands of dollars. Their payout, if they are so lucky, will arrive via the usual Internet banking services.

And how do you play Texas Holdem? Carefully, say enthusiasts, with just the right balance of intuition, bravado, math skills and a vital quotient of psychology.

It pays to be psychic, or think you are.

"I know what cards other people have," Wendy insists. "And when I don't, I have the courage to fold."

"I've played since I was 5," says Ray. "It's a mind game. You read your opponent as much as your cards. You look for a facial expression, eye movement. You have to feel the game."

"You best study your probability theory," says Dave Ross, a Juno Beach computer technician. "But in the end, you best study your opponent."

Dave's skills at computing probability served him well while he played at the same table with Wendy and Ray. Early in the tournament, Dave was on fire: a pair of big kings, a straight, three sevens, a high flush. Then, with Dave holding a pair of kings, Ray went all in and caught a straight to the queen. Dave's kings went down in flames.

"I don't like to lose," he says. "But I love to play."

Don Greene and his son, John, love to play the game and love to deal the game. They run the poker room on the Princess.

"We had to just about get rid of our other poker games once Holdem started to be all the rage," says Don. "We hold tournaments Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We'll have 80 players or more. If you don't reserve a seat at the tournament before you board, you'll probably miss out. The popularity is amazing. And, it's fun."

Paul "Ollie" Hardy, a Princess poker dealer for six years, seconds his boss' emotion: "TV has brought a new type of player on board," he says. "You get doctors, lawyers, housewives. You get the younger players and guys from Century Village. You might still see the guy that's playing with his rent money and shouldn't be. But you see a lot of new faces, people just having fun. Of course, it's great fun if you put up $50 and go home with $500, a thousand or more."

The linguist and essayist Richard Lederer, author of more than 30 books about language, spends a chapter on poker lingo in his latest book, A Man of His Words. Among other tidbits, you'll learn the origin of the expression "pass the buck." Back in riverboat gambling days, a buck knife -- the handle carved from a buck antler -- was often used to denote the dealer's place at the table. As the deal moved around the table, so, too, did the buck knife.

The most revealing detail in the chapter is Lederer's expression of fatherly pride at the career choice of his son, Howard, and daughter, Annie Duke: They're professional poker players. Both make big money on the Holdem circuit. Both are known for their prescient plotting, their skill in reading opponents and slamming down "all in" bets with authority, even when they're bluffing. Poker is really about language: body language, mathematical language.

And then there's the rich language of the game itself, where traces of Hold 'em's Texas origins in the 1940s can be detected: "The big slick" for ace-king in the hole. "Bullets" for aces. "Cowboys" for kings. And when the last bet is called, it's time for the showdown.

James McManus, in his book about the World Series of Poker, Positively Fifth Street, spends several pages exploring the wonderful nuances of the language of the game: Ace-ace is called American Airlines. The 4-5 combination is called a Jesse James, referring to the bandit's favorite sidearm. And as every young player knows, a pair each of aces and eights are the "Dead Man's Hand," which Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead in the town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory.

McManus' Las Vegas adventure began when Harper's sent him there to write about female poker professionals playing in the World Series. His assignment also included weaving in threads about the murder of Teddy Binion, the flamboyant and debauched casino operator. His father, Benny Binion, was the man who brought respectability to Holdem, starting the World Series of Poker at his Horseshoe Casino in 1970. Six players showed up.

In 2000, the World Series of Poker drew 512 players to Binion's, including McManus. Teddy Binion was not there, having been murdered in 1998 by his girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Their trial was winding down during the 2000 tournament.

"Binion's murder, the trial and the poker tournament were all stories of the human species," says McManus. "Morality plays. Murder, greed, Las Vegas. Poker. Skill, luck, fate. It's all there, a human story."

McManus is a professor of comparative literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He's also a veteran amateur Holdem player. He parlayed part of his magazine advance into an entry seat -- worth $10,000 -- in the 2000 tourney. He played well over four grueling days, well enough to place fifth and take home $247,760. Then he treated himself to a cheeseburger and began calculating the cost of college for his two small children. He left Las Vegas a happy man. Most do not.

Back on the Princess, Ray DeCario's happiness was short-lived. About a half-hour after dispatching Wendy Shephard, he went "all in" with a high pair, only to lose to a "gut shot" straight. Still, he placed about 20th out of 82 players. Not a bad night.

"I'll probably come back Wednesday," he says with a laugh. "Well, Wednesday is poker night on the Travel Channel, so maybe I'll just stay home and watch. Then again, they show reruns on Saturday morning, so maybe I'll come back here Wednesday and watch poker Saturday."

For people like Ray -- and there are millions like Ray -- it's all Texas Holdem, all the time.