TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

But don't expect any major displays of emotion from this self-contained young man. After all, the ability to maintain an enigmatic facial expression is one of the skills that helped him outplay 340 other Texas Holdem contestants in the Las Vegas tournament.

"I got a little bit lucky," says Matros (poker face again). "Anyway, I didn't get unlucky. That's the typical way you get knocked out."

The World Poker Tour Championship, with a booty of $8.3 million, is one of the top two Texas Holdem poker events in the world, bringing together winners of the World Poker Tour, who competed in more than a dozen locations, including Paris, Aruba, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Poker-fanciers who didn't participate in these events bought into the contest for a hefty $25,000.

Matros, whose prize was actually $706,903, and other big winners are riding a poker tsunami. Fueled by online games and television coverage, increasing numbers of players are entering tournaments, ratcheting up prize pools.

Last year's championship attracted only about a hundred players. The first-prize winner took in $1,011,886, a pittance compared to this year's $2.7 million. Later this month, the World Series of Poker, the other major event, will be played in Vegas, and promises to award even larger sums.

Matros, who lives in Yonkers, began his winning streak in March, when he invested $109 to enter the PartyPoker.com "Trip to Las Vegas" contest. His victory in the online competition bought access to a Las Vegas tournament from which players were selected for the big game. His success earned him the $25,000 championship entrance fee.

You could say Matros was born with a deck of cards in his hands. He grew up in Westhaven, N.Y., where a favorite aunt taught him a game she called Dirty Dog, when he was in grade school. But it was his poker-loving dad who instilled in him a passion for the game. On June 30, you can see him in action, when the Travel Channel airs the World Poker Tour Championship.

Still, Matros says his early games didn't indicate that success was in the cards.

"I wasn't that good," he says matter-of-factly.

In fact, he pretty much abandoned the game during his first three years at Yale University, where he was a math major. "I thought I was done with it," he says. "I thought it was a sucker's game."

That changed about five years ago, when his father introduced him to a popular version of poker called Texas Holdem, which is played in casinos and aired on the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour and ESPN's World Series of Poker.

As explained on casinogambling.com, "Texas Holdem is a deceptively simple game to learn but a harder game to master. Each player is dealt two personal cards and then five community cards are turned up on the board. You make the best five card hand using any combination of the seven cards."

"It was like a light switched on," Matros says. "A totally different story, a different level of understanding."

He started winning enough to pay his second year's graduate-school tuition.

Last year, Matros had a "poker-intensive summer." He rented a house near Foxwood's Resort Casino in Connecticut and immersed himself in the game. The commitment paid off.

Matros, who has been studying fiction-writing at Sarah Lawrence, and graduates later this month with a master's in fine arts, believes his mathematical acumen combined with the people skills required for writing novels and short stories are what bring him success at the poker table.

A knowledge of basic math helps in figuring out the odds of making a hand, he says, while more complicated mathematics is used to determine strategies. A knowledge of human nature improves your ability to tell when an opponent is bluffing.

"It's not gambling," Matros insists. "Gambling is carelessly throwing money away and hoping to get lucky. Poker is using your skills to make money. People don't understand that it's an investment and an occupation," he says, adding that he has no interest in other casino games.

What separates skillful players from kitchen-table dabblers, he says, is that they have the skill to make more money on good hands and lose less on bad ones.

"It's the cards that determine who wins the pot. But skill determines who wins the most money in the long run," he says. "There are lots of ways you can make money. But this is one of the more enjoyable ways. It's an intellectual challenge."

Matros plans to use some of his winnings to buy a condo in Brooklyn. He will also pay off some school loans and buy something meaningful for his parents.

"I don't plan on playing Texas Holdem poker forever," he says. But for now, he'll put some of his earnings back in the game.

He's already talking about the May 22 World Series of Poker, and will hit some of the spots on the World Poker Tour leading up to the 2005 championship.

In the near future, he could also be hopping around the world on another kind of tour.

His book "The Making of a Poker Player," which combines teaching strategies with stories from his card-playing past, will be published by Citadel Press. The book was completed before his latest victory.

"Now," he says, "I'll be adding a new chapter."