Hold 'em has taken hold in college dorms and on the Internet, where poker sites abound.
While the Palm Beach Princess rolls gently about five miles from shore, Wendy Shephard is on a roll of her own. Over at the poker table, she is sitting pretty with a full house - three sevens over two kings.
But Ray DeCario knows that he is holding a bigger full house. He pushes his pile of chips - the entire pile - into the center of the table. "All in," he says.
Shephard pushes her chips - every last one - across the felt. "All in," she says. And just like that, it's all over for her.
Welcome to no-limit Texas Hold 'em poker.
Shephard, 33, a golf pro by day, and DeCario, 57, a retired maintenance worker, are two of 82 players trying to score part of the $9,400 in prize money in the Monday night poker tournament aboard the Princess. The tournaments are the hottest thing going on the ship, a former Love Boat. But the players aren't looking for love. They're looking for action. Each puts up $50 for the thrills, stress and cutthroat competition of the game.
Not that there's anything new about Americans' love of poker, which made its way up the Mississippi with French traders more than two centuries ago. Presidents have played it - Harding, Truman, Kennedy. GIs have played it in muddy foxholes. Sailors have 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 Hold 'em has become part of that fabric. It's 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 Hold 'em to the fact that it is the ultimate survival game. Real people playing for real money, sometimes as much as $4 million.
Hold 'em has taken hold in college dorms and on the Internet, where poker sites abound.
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. Some play for pennies, some for "play" money, some for tens of thousands of dollars. Payout for the lucky will arrive by way of the usual Internet banking services.
And how do you play Texas Hold 'em? Carefully, say enthusiasts, with just the right balance of intuition, bravado, math skills and psychology.
"I know what cards other people have," Shephard insisted. "And when I don't, I have the courage to fold."
"I've played since I was 5," said DeCario. "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," said Dave Ross, a computer technician from Juno Beach. "But in the end, you best study your opponent."
Ross' skills at computing probability served him well as he played at the same table with Shephard and DeCario. Early in the tournament, Ross was on fire - a pair of big kings, a straight, three sevens, a high flush. Then, with Ross holding a pair of kings, DeCario went all in and caught a straight to the queen. Ross' kings went down in flames. "I don't like to lose," he said. "But I love to play."
Don Greene and his son, John, run the poker room on the Princess.
"We had to just about get rid of our other poker games once Hold 'em started to be all the rage," said DonG reene. "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."
Paul "Ollie" Hardy, a Princess poker dealer for six years, agreed. "TV has brought a new type of player on board," he said. "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, $1,000 or more."
Richard Lederer, a linguist and essayist who has written more than 30 books about language, spends a chapter on poker lingo in his latest book, A Man of His Words. He writes about 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 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 Hold 'em circuit. They are known for their prescient plotting, their skill in reading opponents, and slamming down "all in" bets with authority, even when they're bluffing.
Then there's the rich language of the game itself, where traces of Hold 'em's origins in Texas 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 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 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 included weaving in threads about the murder of Teddy Binion, the flamboyant casino operator. His father, Benny Binion, was the man who brought respectability to Hold 'em by 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 killed 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," said 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 is also a veteran amateur Hold 'em 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 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.
Back on the Princess, DeCario's happiness was short-lived. About half an hour after dispatching 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.
"I'll probably come back Wednesday," he said 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 DeCario- - and there are millions like Ray - it's all Texas Hold 'em, all the time.
Source: Paul Reid, Cox News Service
