TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

Just one woman waving a religious tract has come in since the Texas Holdem poker-chip store opened right off Lexington's main drag, so John Beck counts himself lucky.

Under the Bible Belt's buckle, he wondered himself whether his new business would thrive.

Beck and his wife, Brenda, are taking a gamble that Texas Holdem Poker Chips and Gifts will attract enough seasoned players and open-walleted beginners. In conservative Davidson County, they are also trying to capitalize on a national fad that is tightly restricted in North Carolina, if not illegal most of the time.

Despite that technicality, many local poker players are taking their game seriously enough to buy high-class chips, automated card shufflers, game tables with cup holders, even instructional DVDs from such professionals as Harold Lederer and Phil Hellmuth.

Provisioned by the Becks' store, customers can change their table into a kitchen casino with a machine-washable poker tablecloth and decorate their Christmas tree with poker-theme ornaments.

Just as the value of a diamond goes up with its carat, the price of a chip goes up with its weight.

"Hear that cling, cling, cling sound?" John Beck asked last week as he stood at a felt-covered table in his store and shuffled a stack of chips. "That's a true casino weight chip." Brenda Beck added: "They say you mean business."

The Becks - who both grew up in the North and learned to play Texas Holdem poker young - took the game up again about five years ago. It turned into a business about a year ago, when they began importing chips from China and selling them online.

Then the calls came at home, and at night. Customers asked for deliveries instead of shipments. Brenda Beck found herself hauling around poker chips in the back of her car.

Keeping their full-time jobs as a truck driver and a postal carrier, the couple opened their Lexington store this fall. They now sell between 30 and 50 sets of chips a month, priced between $75 and $118 a set, Brenda Beck said.

Most of their customers play Texas Holdem, a variety made popular by the televised World Series of Poker where professionals competed for about $49 million this year.

Many play online. Home games are found through friends who vouch for newcomers.

Homepokergames.com , a Web site that catalogs poker get-togethers by state and country, recently listed 11 games in the Triad area. "It has their e-mail and phone number, and whether it's a smoking or nonsmoking game," John Beck said. "It's right there, even in states where it's illegal."

"We didn't bring it here. It was already here."

State law frowns on "games of chance," which pretty much makes any card game, slot machine or sports pool at which money or prizes are at stake illegal, said Rodney Johnson, a Greensboro-area supervisor for the N.C. Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement, the state agency that also investigates gambling.

The law includes informal home games, Johnson says, though he said that time and resources often limit law enforcement to high-stakes games where alcohol is sold illegally. Smaller games are referred to local sheriff's offices.

Nonprofit groups that play host to raffle and bingo games are exempt. Video-poker machines must be registered and only pay out $10 at a time.

At the Cherokee reservation in the southwestern mountains, where casino gambling is legal, Harrah's Cherokee Casino is advertising live poker tables to open next year.

Locally, a Thomasville man is putting together legislation that he hopes state legislators will pass allowing nonprofit organizations to be hosts for charity poker tournaments. He is also preparing his defense. "People are concerned that it's going to bring a criminal element to the area," Michael Frisbee said.

"People, we're not talking about setting up poker halls or opening up casinos in every corner. We're just talking about setting up a game that everyone, of all walks of life, has been getting into."

Frisbee said that small home games should be legal, too. "What's the big deal? I don't think the government should be getting into homes."

The big deal, Johnson says, is that there isn't a state gaming commission to protect people from scams.

Though Texas Holdem poker players would argue fiercely otherwise, the game is one of chance, Johnson says, not of skill. "In the end, the luck of the draw can (beat) all the skill in the world," he said.

The Becks' store even rents tables and chips for larger games or tournaments. Once the chips and tables leave their store, the Becks say, it isn't their responsibility to police their buyers.

"We wouldn't know what they would necessarily rent them for. We wouldn't ask," Brenda Beck says.

The poker fad is for sale in mainstream America, too. Poker chips were on display at Target last week, right across from the pet-food aisle.

Jimmy Gleason, a local lawyer, was surprised to find automated card shufflers in demand when he went looking to replace one.

"And we're talking a Wal-Mart type store," he said. "Why in the world would a card shuffler be out of stock?"