Poker - in television shows, books, magazines - is red hot and coming up aces
Though Hollywood specializes in the improbable, even the industry's most bankable screenwriters likely would have been laughed out of their pitch meetings if they tried to sell this particular story:
An amateur poker player from Tennessee puts down $40 to enter an Internet event and soon finds himself bluffing his way to the Las Vegas winner's circle in his first-ever live tournament.
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The tourney just so happens to be the game's marquee event, the World Series of Poker, where the first-place prize is a tidy $2.5 million. Oh, and the guy has the perfect gambler's name: Chris Moneymaker – "Money" to his friends.
Yeah, right.
Only, it's a true story.
It happened in May 2003 in the 34th annual World Series and was the major accelerant in the explosive cultural wildfire that is poker, as it inspired legions to get into the game.
"After Moneymaker, poker hit a real critical mass," says Bhu Srinivasan, publisher of the new poker magazine All In. "The growth was tremendous." With an estimated 70 million Americans now playing the game, media companies are betting big on poker.
Already this month, Srinivasan introduced All In. On Thursday, ESPN unveils the poker soap opera "Tilt." And Feb. 15, Moneymaker tells his unlikely story in a new book, "Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 Into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker."
It's the latest profitable, if peripheral, pursuit for Moneymaker, whose dramatic, nationally televised performance in the shuffle-up-and-deal set's Super Bowl raised his profile to the point that he had to hire an agent.
He taped a commentary track with several other poker stars for the recent DVD reissue of the classic poker movie "Rounders" and he's developing a poker video game.
More entrants, in other words, in the increasingly crowded field of poker-related media.
"Poker," says Seale Ballenger, publicity director for Moneymaker's publisher, Harper Entertainment, "is almost at the saturation point."
And it's showing no signs of drying up anytime soon, what with ESPN about to go on "Tilt."
But that show's success is no sure bet: A preview copy of the pilot episode was roundly laughed at by amateur poker players during a recent home game – not a good sign for a dramatic series that's supposed to be serious.
It was a disappointing bust, given that "Tilt" was created by the pair behind the well regarded "Rounders." (Then again, "Tilt" is airing on the network that brought us "Playmakers," a show about pro football that managed to make the small-screen version of "Bad News Bears" look like great scripted-sports TV.) Anyway, "Tilt" is previewed in the January-February issue of All In.
Also noted in the new magazine: The Game Show Network is getting into the action by broadcasting a series of poker tournaments – thus joining ESPN (home of the World Series of Poker), the Travel Channel (World Poker Tour), Bravo ("Celebrity Poker Showdown") and Fox Sports Network ("Poker Superstars Invitational") in the great ratings grab of televised poker.
The magazine includes a section on poker books, which have proliferated over the past two years and could well hit their high-water mark with the publication of Moneymaker's breezy autobiography, which was written with best-selling author Daniel Paisner.
"We've had a ton of interest in the book," says Harper Entertainment's Ballenger. "Even from what you'd think are these staid bookstores, who are saying: ‘We'd love to do something with him.' Everyone seems to want to play. It's a great story at the right time."
Srinivasan thought so, too, about the expanding poker world at large.
With poker said by analysts to account for between $3 billion and $5 billion in annual revenue, the former dot-com executive decided to get in the game by launching All In.
After two test runs – one featuring actor Ben Affleck, who somehow has become a formidable threat at the poker table – All In went public this month with an issue whose cover spotlights one of poker's most recognizable visages: That of former World Series champion Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, who is among the magazine's high-profile contributors.
Others include poker pro and author Phil Gordon, who cohosts Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown" series – a program that surely inspired countless players to make it their life's mission to get into a high-stakes cash game with rocker Scott Sapp, the former Creed frontman whose surname aptly describes his poker abilities.
Though there are other poker titles on the market – most notably, Card Player – All In, says Srinivasan, is the first with mainstream advertising (from beer and spirits companies) and broad national distribution (via Time Warner).
He's promising the bimonthly magazine's advertisers an average first-year circulation of 150,000.
"There's no question that the momentum of poker's popularity is going to help us," says the 28-year-old Srinivasan, the former director of business development at InfoSpace.com.
Still, Srinivasan acknowledges that no trend lasts forever – and that it would be folly to figure that the interest level in poker, which seems to be the new martini, can be sustained.
(So great is the interest, by the way, that the year after Moneymaker beat out 837 players to win the World Series of Poker's main event, the field tripled in size to 2,576. This year, organizers expect 5,000 people to pay the $10,000 World Series entry fee.)
"We're not banking on poker's popularity level being able to sustain itself at this rate," Srinivasan says. "But even if the popularity wanes and interest is at the late-2003, early-2004 level – which is a lot lower than it is today – I think we'll remain extremely viable." Or will they?
Harper Entertainment's Ballenger has been in the media business for 20 years. More than a few fads and trends have come and gone during that stretch.
"Give it another year," Ballenger says. "The media's interest in poker is here and now, but they'll be onto something else soon enough."
Not just yet, though.
First, the publicity push for Moneymaker, who will be featured in the March issues of both Vanity Fair and Maxim.
Better yet, Moneymaker will talk to Dan Rather for an upcoming "60 Minutes" piece on his improbable story.
A happy Hollywood ending, indeed.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
