With no show of nervousness, University of North Carolina senior Deak Childress pushes more money than his entire education has cost him into the middle of the poker table.
The tournament began with $400,000 worth of chips spread evenly among 80 players. After this hand, Childress will have every last one of the chips -- and a championship to boot.
Too bad for Childress it's funny money.
"This is good, clean fun," Childress said after winning the North Carolina Poker League's debut event at Spanky's Restaurant & Bar. "It's perfect timing for a bar to do this type of thing."
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The timing has never been better because poker has never been more popular. And television, without a doubt, is to thank.
The 2004 World Series of Poker concludes tonight on ESPN, and thus far it has posted ratings that are competing with Chapel Hill's most sacred of sports.
More than 1.9 million U.S. households tuned in for last Tuesday's 10 p.m. episode. Last March, 2.4 million households watched the biannual Duke-North Carolina men's basketball game on ESPN.
And just like students who watch the Tar Heels on television, then head to Woollen Gym to play themselves, people are watching poker and then looking for places to play.
"I play a lot more than I used to -- it's in direct proportion to how much it's on TV," UNC senior Terrence Jordan said before being dealt his first two cards of the night. "This seems cool. It's free, so the worst you can do is have fun playing."
The tournament series, which will resume on Sept. 22 and continue every Wednesday night through Nov. 3, has to be free to be legal in North Carolina. But money is still a part of the equation.
League founder Scott Boring, a recent Kansas University graduate who played in a similar league in Lawrence, said he gets paid by Spanky's for the event in the same way a musical group would. Boring is paid for bringing in customers, and he's certainly doing that. He had to turn away 50 players for the first tournament on a night when Spanky's normally doesn't even bother opening its upstairs bar.
"It's usually quiet in here, and really everywhere downtown, on Wednesday nights," said Tom Herzog, Spanky's co-owner and general manager. "But this is bringing people through the door.
"Seeing the poker stuff on TV, I figured it was rolling in this direction."
'We've launched a sport'
As most of Chapel Hill sleeps, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, cable sports giant ESPN begins the countdown clock on the sleeping giant that it has helped to awaken.
It's 5 o'clock in the morning -- just 16 hours until the final two episodes of the World Series of Poker.
ESPN usually reserves its countdown clock for such highly anticipated events as the opening night of its Sunday night NFL broadcasts or opening day of the Major League Baseball season.
But these days, seemingly out of nowhere, a card game is showing signs of competing with the standards in spectator sports.
"We kind of look at the numbers and we just say, 'This is just amazing. Go figure,' " said Bob Chesterman, coordinating producer of ESPN Original Entertainment. "It's a big property that does very well for us.
"As far as reality television goes, this is pretty much it."
ESPN had broadcast poker in some form -- usually in an indigestible form -- since 1994. But the network first threw considerable resources at its coverage last summer, when 1.7 million U.S. households tuned in to watch Tennessee accountant Chris Moneymaker turn a $40 investment into a $2.5 million victory during the final episode of the 2003 World Series of Poker.
It's much the same story on the Travel Channel, where the poker-on-television phenomenon first gained momentum with the launch of the World Poker Tour in March 2003. Earlier this summer, nearly 1.2 million households tuned in for a rerun of the Jack Binion Poker Open, making it the most-watched broadcast ever on the network.
That's more people than watched the ballyhooed women's basketball showdown between No. 1 Duke and No. 2 Connecticut in 2003.
And, according to World Poker Tour founder Steve Lipscomb, it's only the beginning.
"The whole idea behind the World Poker Tour was to launch the PGA, the NFL, the NBA of poker," Lipscomb said. "In a very short time, we have legitimately done that. ... We've launched a sport."
UNC sophomore Kunal Choksi, like most of those gathered at Spanky's, certainly treats poker like a sport. Choksi, who is from Burlington, often gathers with four or five friends to watch poker. At the same time, the friends play poker.
"The other night we were watching, and somebody got a full house on the river. We all stood up and cheered," Choksi said, still lamenting how his starting hand of two kings -- one of the strongest hands in Texas hold 'em poker -- got him bounced from the tournament. "You can really get into this."
Only the beginning?
While those who win in the televised events routinely take home million-dollar checks, the winners of the first two North Carolina Poker League events took home top-of-the-line chip sets. Future winners will receive gift certificates to Spanky's, and the winner of the season-ending tournament will win a poker table and chip set.
Boring believes this might only be the beginning.
His initial goal is to get tournaments running in three Chapel Hill bars. But he said he'd eventually like to get sponsors involved who could possibly offer prizes the caliber of which every UNC student can appreciate -- like NCAA Tournament tickets, for example.
"This could become really big," Boring said. "I've watched some of the stuff on ESPN, and I figured I'd try to capitalize on the fad of poker on television.
"As popular as it is right now," he added, "I think it's going to stick around for a few years."
Source: Bryan Sstrickland, The Herald-Sun
