The house wins as Harrah's St. Louis imports a champion to play off the game's surging popularity.
The plasma-screen televisions at Harrah's St. Louis Casino featured World Series of Poker champion Chris Moneymaker in action Thursday night.
The game of Texas hold 'em wasn't from one of the poker shows that have become one of the hottest commodities on cable television. It was being broadcast live from the casino's new poker room, which opened this month to capitalize on the surging popularity of the game.
"It adds a piece that our customers have told us they want," said Bill Keena, senior vice president and general manager of the casino in Maryland Heights. "It gives us that full-service gaming experience."
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Harrah's installed a dozen poker tables in a new 6,000-square-foot section of its casino, bringing back the game after an absence of several years.
All the tables were full during Thursday's grand-opening appearance by Moneymaker, 28, a former accountant from Tennessee who won last year's World Series of Poker title, with a $2.5 million top prize.
A crowd of spectators stood three deep in spots around Moneymaker's table to watch him take on a group of Harrah's customers who won seats at the table through special drawings.
One of the fans was Jason Nardoni, 29, of Affton, who counts himself a regular at Harrah's tables.
"I've been out here the last couple weekends," he said.
Unlike the other games on the casino floor, in which gamblers wager against the house, the players at the poker table wager among themselves. The casino makes its money in the poker room by taking a percentage of each pot.
The rebirth of live poker at Harrah's means new competition for the Ameristar Casino St. Charles and the President Casino on the Admiral.
But just as the expansion of Ameristar's casino three years ago produced a sharp increase in total revenue for the St. Louis market, the addition of a third poker room could promote more overall play.
"I think there is enough pent-up demand that Ameristar and Harrah's are going to be fine," Keena said.
The two casinos are minutes apart by car, on opposite sides of the Missouri River.
Harrah's also is adding a poker room at its casino in North Kansas City. Moneymaker is scheduled to appear there next month.
"It's great to do these things," Moneymaker said. "You meet a lot of good people."
In addition to Thursday's announced two-hour session, Moneymaker played for 10 hours at Harrah's tables Wednesday, walking away with more than $1,000 in winnings.
Harrah's and Moneymaker have become partners of a sort. Harrah's gained the rights to the World Series of Poker this year when it bought the defunct Binion's Horsehoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
Binion's began the event in 1970. This year's installment, held this month, drew a record 2,567 entrants. Greg Raymer, a patent attorney from Connecticut, won the title, with a $5 million prize.
Roughly half the participants in the World Series of Poker paid $10,000 to enter. The rest earned spots by winning smaller satellite tournaments or prevailing in Internet competitions.
The following that televised poker and its star players have attracted might seem baffling to the casual observer. But to those who play the game - some call it a sport - the tension in the broadcasts is palpable, and the strategy is instructive.
The television shows, such as the "World Series of Poker" on ESPN and the "World Poker Tour" on the Travel Channel, add a twist by showing the cards that players are holding. This enables viewers to anticipate the action, agonize over predicaments and applaud bold moves.
"The drama they've added to it has basically made it reality TV," Moneymaker said.
Poker has been embraced by some of Hollywood's biggest stars, including actors Ben Affleck and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Their enthusiasm has helped to catapult the game into a much higher orbit, said Tim Staples , a California-based agent who represents Moneymaker.
"We live in a celebrity culture, you know?" he said. "The beauty of this is that, unlike most sports, anyone can play."
And with a few lucky breaks, average players occasionally can beat experts, Staples said.
That's not true in golf, for example, where duffers have almost no chance against the likes of Masters champion Phil Mickelson.
"Phil Mickelson will beat you 10 out of 10 times," Staples said. "But you might bust Moneymaker one out of 10 times."
As many as 50 million Americans have played poker at least once in the past year, either at casinos, at casual games or via the Internet, Staples said.
The players at Harrah's on Thursday were a diverse group of men and women ranging in age from their early 20s to their late 60s and beyond. Some were relative newcomers, and others were regulars.
Nardoni, who was watching the action Thursday, said he has gone home after a night of poker at the casinos and returned the next day to find some of the same players he left behind still at the tables and still wearing the same clothes.
"I've seem some guys playing for 36 hours straight," he said.
Source: St. Louis Today
