ATLANTIC CITY - Tony Gines, 22, and Joe Melillo, 24, both of Paramus, sized up the competition for a Texas Hold'em poker tournament at the Sands Casino Hotel Friday night. At first glance, the group looked like typical poker players - older guys with bad toupees and loud shirts; young men heavy on attitude and bravado.
But Gines and Melillo weren't nervous. In this room they were seasoned vets. Melillo had been playing Hold'em for a solid year. Gines, all of six months. And the "players" in the room were dominated by doctors, lawyers, plumbers and truck drivers, not to mention a few grandmas and soccer moms, many of whom were in their first poker tournament ever. The buy-in for the event - $35 bucks.
"It's just exploding," Gines said. "Everybody I know wants to play Texas Hold'em."
Welcome to the biggest boom in poker since Kenny Rogers sang about the game 20 years ago. And once again we can thank popular entertainment for the interest. Shows like "The World Series of Poker" on ESPN, "Celebrity Poker" on Bravo and "The World Poker Tour" on the Travel Channel have made the game a hot commodity that's getting hotter.
"I saw it on ESPN and I was hooked," Gines said. "First I started playing it online and then the next thing you know I was playing in poker clubs. So now we're ready to try our hands here in Atlantic City."
The poker boom is really the Texas Hold'em boom. It's crowding out more traditional games such as Seven Card Stud. Already, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, Caesars Atlantic City and Sands Casino Hotel offer Hold'em tournaments where, for a small buy-in, players are given a stack of "no value" chips to play for a percentage of the total money collected. The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort is beginning tournaments next week.
And with the growing popularity of the game, it may not be long before all city casinos offer tournaments.
"I must get 25 new e-mails a day asking for Texas Hold'em tournaments," said Tom Gitto, poker manager for the Taj Mahal. "And I'm talking about new e-mails from people I haven't heard from before. It's amazing. The demand is so high, we had to respond."
Two factors are driving the poker explosion. First, is the game Texas Hold'em itself, one of the least complicated yet potentially lucrative forms of poker, is easy to play. In the game, players are dealt two cards face down and share five community cards dealt face up.
While the game has its nuances, it's much easier to play than other types of poker.
"It truly is an easy game," said Stan Strickland, poker room manager at the Borgata. "That's because there is no remembering involved. You just have to deal with the community cards. In a Stud game, you could be asked to remember as many as 35 cards that are dealt to other players."
Camera shows hole cards
The second factor driving the game, however, is the TV coverage, or more precisely the invention of a small camera that allows viewers to see the "hole," or face-down cards, of a player. ESPN and other networks have actually been televising poker events for years, but it's the camera in the table - developed about a year ago - which has made the shows hits.
"The camera means that you can learn how to play by watching," Strickland said. "Without the camera, you don't get to see how the pros are playing and you don't learn anything. You're still at a loss to the basic strategy of the game.
"But when you see those two cards, then you can see what they're doing - why they're raising and which cards they are willing to bet on," he said. "The camera makes them teachers. People don't learn how to play poker when they are young like they used to. TV is reintroducing them to the game."
And once you figure out how to play, it's an easy step to see yourself sitting at the table.
"You watch the game and right away people say, 'I can do that,'" Gitto said. "That could be me winning the tournament."
The TV shows also go for the most exciting version of Texas Hold'em, called "no limit." During any hand a player can go "all in," and bet every chip in front of them. Opponents have to cover the bet, but can't raise.
In a high stakes game like "The World Series of Poker," players can have more than $1 million chips in front of them, and two hands later, be out of the tournament. Or, they can go from a dangerously small stack of chips to being the tournament's chip leader just as quickly.
The resort also is cashing in on the high limit games. The Taj Mahal offers the "U.S. Poker Championship" in September and is close to announcing a deal to televise the tournament. The Sands also recently televised "The Million Dollar Deal: Showdown at the Sands."
The Borgata recently filmed a satellite tournament for the Travel Channel's "World Poker Tour," as part of its Borgata Open, which will air in March. Ironically, however, The Travel Channel is not available on most cable systems in New Jersey.
While casinos do offer regular "no limit" tournaments - usually with a buy-in of more than $100 - most tournaments limit the amounts bet.
"That actually can be better," said Melillo. "It gives you a better chance of hanging in there."
Poker experts advise that before a player takes on "no limit" action, he or she play some low-limit, Texas Hold'em tournaments first and gain some experience.
Still the TV shows can foster some grand dreams. In the 2003 "World Series of Poker," for example, an amateur Texas Hold'em player beat some of the best professional poker players in the world to claim a prize more than $2 million.
Prizes like that are turning professional poker players into stars, complete with sponsors and endorsement deals. Most of the TV shows feature some of the best and most experienced poker players in the world.
But at a Friday night poker tournament at the Sands, there's a different group in the room.
"I think this is one of the greatest things a father and son can do together," said Earl Brown of Philadelphia, who was playing in the Sands tournament with his 29-year-old son Martin. "And not just father and son: father and daughter, mother and son, mother and daughter. Look around this room and you'll see a lot of families together.
"And this brings in all kinds of people," he said. "I'm a lawyer. I've met bankers and doctors and a lot of professional people. You get to know each other and make friends. It's great."
And with a little luck, the big time could be right around the corner for any one of them.
A quick lesson on how to play Texas Hold'em
Texas Hold'em is played with a standard 52-card deck.
A round disc - known as a "dealer button" - moves clockwise from player to player with each hand. The button marks which player would be the dealer if the deal were advanced from player to player as the game went along.
The two players to the left of the dealer (the button) put a predetermined amount of money, called a "blind," into the pot before any cards are dealt, ensuring that there's something to play for on every hand. Most often, the "small blind" - the player to the left of the dealer - puts up half the minimum bet, and the "large blind" puts up the full minimum bet.
Each player is dealt two cards, face down.
A round of betting takes place, beginning with the player to the left of the two who posted the blinds. Players can call, raise, or fold when it's their turn to bet.
After the first betting round, the dealer flips the next three cards face up on the table. These cards are called the "flop." After the flop, another round of betting takes place.
The dealer then plays one more card face up onto the table. This, the fourth community card, is called the "turn card."
After another round of betting, the dealer places the final face-up card on the table. This card is called the "river."
Players can now use any combination of seven cards - the five community cards and the two cards known only to them - to form the best possible five-card poker hand.
There is a fourth and final round of betting. The player with the best hand wins.
Source: about.com
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