America has gone card crazy with a passion for poker that is growing every day.
America has gone card crazy with a passion for poker that is growing every day. You can't channel surf for long without coming across another poker showdown on TV, and online tournaments are drawing millions of new players to the game. In the middle of that frenzy, the 35th annual World Series of Poker kicks off at the newly reopened Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas. News 3's Jim Snyder reports.
It will feature more players and a bigger payday than ever before: three and a half million dollars to the player who can outlast them all. Talk about a poker face. Try and guess what cards this guy is holding. How about him? Is that a real yawn, or is he hiding something? Professional poker is a game of subtleties, where an unconscious fidget or uncontrolled smirk can give you away and leave you broke.
advertisement
Party Poker
The biggest online poker room with thousands of players.
Choose one of the following games:
Texas Holdem Poker, Omaha Poker, Omaha Hi,
Seven Card Stud, Stud 8 or Better.
Receive a 20% bonus of your first deposit up to a $100!!!
Party Poker
"When a guy's got a hand, he may twitch. He does it every time, so you've got to tail on the guy." Joe Bartholdi's spent the last 35 years studying those moves, and the players who make them. He's a walking history of the World Series of Poker. He's been a dealer since it all started with one table of 10 players. "Then it got bigger and bigger, then by the time I dealt him, I think there was like 13 tables."
He's dealt to the giants, and remembers them all, especially Amarillo Slim. In 1972, he promised to buy Joe a car if he dealt him the spade he needed to win it all. "He walked in and said, I owe you a car, and took me down and bought me a car."
And just last year, a Cinderella story gave millions of amateur players hope. "This is the greatest thing to happen to poker, for this young man to win." He's talking about last year's champ, Chris Moneymaker, who turned a $40 investment in an online tournament into two and a half million when he won the World Series of Poker. It was the first time he'd ever player in a face to face tournament, proving that a rookie can take it all with the right cards, and the right poker face.
"It's the underdog, the little guy who beat the pros." When Binion's Horseshoe closed down, the future of the World Series was in doubt. Howard Greenbaum is in charge of making sure the tradition stays alive now that Harrah's is running the show. "Because the property was closed, we've turned an event we work on seven months a year into something we've done in nine weeks. It's incredible."
So, the game goes on, with champions of the past looking on, giving a new generation of players something to dream about. Last year, 839 players paid 10 thousand each to join in. This year, they're expecting more than 12 hundred.
Source: News 3
