"Poker: The Story of America's National Pastime" is a special
Card Player feature written by James McManus focusing on
the origins and evolution of the game.
James McManus is the author of the classic bestseller Positively
Fifth Street and seven other books. His work appears in The New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Harpers, The Best American
Sports Writing and many other anthologies. He also teaches a course
on the literature and history of poker at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. These historical columns are part of McManus's
next book, which is scheduled to be published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux in 2009.
about 1 month ago
Wednesday, May 12, 2004, Bellagio Resort and Casino. Resting elbows and forearms on the spongy beige cushion, two men face off at a table designed for 10 players. The dealer lifts the green deck from the shuffling gadget recessed into the baize on her left, and slides in the brown deck she used for the previous hand. She cuts the green deck. The freshly unknowable sequence of the 52 cards will determine who wins the next pot.
about 1 month ago
According to the PokerStars website, a deck of 52 cards can be shuffled into 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,404,000,000,000,000,000 sequences. Among them we'll find every last combination of holecards, burn cards, flops, turns, sixth streets, and rivers. Players tend to be furious when, with all of these possible variations, they're dealt a dozen hands in a row that are more or less the same, without a single card higher than 7, for example - unless they're playing lowball, of course, in which case they're thrilled. The length of this number also has a lot to do with why the winner of the World Series of Poker main event is no longer thought of as poker's best player.
2 months ago
The "Poker Boom" unofficially detonated on the evening of March 30, 2003, with the Travel Channel's first broadcast of the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio. Produced by Steven Lipscomb, the show's lavish production values blended tabletop holecard cameras, informative sidebars, and beginner-level explanations from Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten, and all of it was hosted by Playboy cover girl Shana Hiatt, who often wore just a bikini. (The commentary would become more sophisticated as casual viewers began to pick up on the tactics and lingo of tournament hold'em.) The World Poker Tour went on to average 1.1 million viewers during its first season, with reruns attracting an estimated 4 million per show.
2 months ago
In 2000, there were 23 World Series of Poker events, the smallest of which yielded more prize money than the main event of most competing tournaments. Copying the WSOP's freezeout format, with a $10,000 no-limit hold'em event as the finale, they included Jack Binion's World Poker Open, held during January in Tunica; Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker in February, hosted by various casinos; the Diamond Jim Brady in August at The Bicycle Club in Los Angeles; and the U.S. Poker Championships, mid-September to mid-October at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. National championships were also being held in a dozen European cities, including the Helsinki Freezeout, the Irish Open at the Merrion Club in Dublin, and the Euro Finals of Poker at the Aviation Club on the Champs-Elysees. The Australasian Championship took place in Melbourne, along with smaller events in New Zealand, South Africa, and Costa Rica.
3 months ago
By 1997, at least 12 of the 21 bracelets were captured by foreign-born players, confirming that the Texas gamblers' reunions in Reno and Las Vegas had evolved into an authentic World Series. (We must say "at least" because a birth certificate has never been required.) The next year produced at least 10 non-American winners, with the championship bracelet going to Thuan "Scotty" Nguyen, a 35-year-old pro sporting gold chains and Buddhist medallions to go with his curly gelled mullet.
