TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

These guys played poker together all the time (and pool and golf and dice), but this game was different. The visionary casino owner Benny Binion called it 'The World Series of Poker', and said the winner would be official world champion. The victor, decided by collective vote, was Johnny Moss, perhaps the greatest poker player who ever lived.

The following year Binion held the Texas Holdem tournament again, and this time the winner was decided by a knockout rather than a vote. The same guys got together and played until only Moss was left at the table. Now he was a legitimate world champion, although he'd beaten only about 10 people to get there.

The tournament has taken place at Binion's Horseshoe casino on Fremont Street, Las Vegas, every May since. Soon there were 30 players, then 60, and in 2003 it reached 800. This year, however, there was a revolution. The World Series of Poker has just been played by 2,570 people. There were so many, they couldn't all fit into Binion's Horseshoe and had to play on alternate days.

Some queued for two hours just to hand over the $10,000 it cost to play. The competitors' names were not posted outside the tournament room, as usually happens, because there wasn't enough space on the wall. From South America they came; from Scandinavia, from France, from the UK. From Hollywood came the film stars Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Woods and Ben Affleck.

Poor old Maguire had a rough ride in the Texas Holdem tournament, with fellow players shouting: 'Whatcha gonna do, Spiderman?' every time it was his turn to bet. DiCaprio crept in and out under a cap-and-shades disguise. But Affleck has become very popular on the poker scene, due not least to a story that one night in the Bellagio card room he deliberately folded a winning hand for $13,000 because he felt his young opponent couldn't afford to lose.

First prize in this year's World Series was a staggering $5 million: 71-year-old Doyle Brunson, who was there in 1970 when all the would-be champions fitted around a single baize table and first prize was simply glory, levered his 20-stone bulk through the heaving crowd looking absolutely baffled.

There are two reasons why poker has suddenly exploded. First and most important is the internet. Anybody anywhere at any time can now go online with a credit card and play against real opponents around the world - $40 million is gambled daily on poker websites.

Many of the competitors at this year's World Series had won their seats in internet competitions, or been sponsored to play by poker websites. I was sponsored myself, by the Prima Poker network (primapoker.com) which is one of the classier firms: they don't advertise on billboards, they sponsor The Hendon Mob (Britain's coolest foursome of professional players) and they did a particularly good job with my logo. While other players were wandering around Las Vegas in giant Aertex shirts emblazoned with URLs, I was wearing a natty little costume brooch with 'PrimaPoker.com' picked out in rhinestones.

Internet gaming has delivered an escape from the restrictions of casino hours and geography, and from the fear of shady basements or threatening sums of money. Prima Poker is actually a conglomerate of different websites: via their home page you can find small Texas Holdem games for beginners to cut their teeth, middling games for keen amateurs to have a shot, and big games for professionals to make a serious living. As Dick Van Dyke says of the chimney in Mary Poppins : 'It's the gateway to a whole new world.'

When I started playing poker around 10 years ago, the only option was standing shyly outside the cardroom at the Victoria Sporting Club in Marble Arch, staring through a glass window at the chainsmoking old men and wondering when I'd be brave enough to join them. I love that place now and nearly everyone inside, but it took me three years to enter. My counterparts in 2004 can simply sign up with Prima and learn safely at home in their pyjamas.

Hand in hand with the online poker explosion came television. This month alone we can watch The Poker Million on Sky Sports One (sponsored by Ladbrokespoker.com, in which internet players compete against professionals, running on Friday nights), World Poker Tour on the digital channel Challenge TV (major international tournaments, broadcasting on Saturdays) and the entertaining Celebrity Poker Club, which starts again on Challenge on 29 June, and offers a surreal range of competitors from Eric Bristow to Tom Parker Bowles and Steve Davis to Dr Raj Persaud.

Among this year's hopefuls it should be particularly interesting to see how a trio of famous 'bad guys' fare ('Nasty Nick' Bateman from Big Brother, Major Charles Ingram from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Nick Leeson the jailed stock trader) in a game where deceit is actively encouraged.

This has all changed the face of poker. Doyle Brunson is typical of the old guard; born in 1933 to a Baptist family in west Texas, he became a road gambler and travelled the American South making illegal books, betting on sports and fleecing opponents in lucrative private cash games. He played with gangsters and cattlemen, oil barons and crooks. He won the World Series in 1976 and 1977; he has made more than $1m playing poker and lost more than that playing golf. He's a good ole boy. Heading for Mexico for a jaguar hunt in 1960, he climbed up and down a mountain in the Sierra Madre in less than two hours because his friend Sailor Roberts bet him $2,500 that he couldn't. When he came down Doyle said: 'Hell, I coulda done it in 20 minutes if the price was right.'

The typical modern internet player is Swedish, blond, polite and good at maths. He isn't an outlaw. He isn't a crazy gambler. He has a day job. He's precise, technical and takes good care of his health. And many of them - hold your breath - are women.

Meanwhile, due to their new TV star status, even the professional Texas Holdem poker players have come over rather sensible. Many have signed contracts promising to do 'nothing disreputable' while wearing a corporate logo. The game is bigger and better than ever, but one can't help feeling a little wistful. Aren't these people meant to be disreputable? Wasn't there supposed to be a lawless alternative world where free-wheeling gamblers laughed at responsibility and flew where the wind took them? Now they're all getting up early for TV interviews and paying tax on their profits.

Some romance flooded back when I took my seat on day one of the World Series. Here we were in Binion's, the rickety old downtown spot where the great tournament has always been played. Girls in tiny dresses wandered the room crooning 'Cigars, cigarettes? Cocktails? Chocolate, candy, gum?', like the market scene from Oliver! Masseurs hawked their skills to high-rollers.

On my left was former world champion Carlos Mortensen, who won this event in 2001. (Of course, there were only 600 runners then and he only won a million dollars: pin money.) I had a good first day, but purely because I found the discipline to fold some strong hands. Twice I had a pair of aces (the best possible starting hand) 'cracked' by other players who improved against me, and once I 'flopped' a straight when the Scandinavian internet player on my right had made a higher straight. To survive these situations without going broke is something of an achievement - but it's no way to accumulate chips.

Nevertheless I was pleased with my discipline, and rather proud of my classy Prima Poker logo, which made my opponents think I must be a very important English player. With a bit of bluffing and a few luckier hands, I managed to convert my opening $10,000 to $15,000 by the end of the day. If we'd been allowed to cash in at that point, I'd have been perfectly happy.

Hunders of others were knocked out that day. With the sheer number of players, it was like the Grand National in wet weather: favourites tumbling on all sides, carnage as several fell at once. Nobody knew who would limp, muddy and knackered, over the finish line. There was a wave of laughter at 7pm when the tournament director announced: 'Congratulations, you have all made it to the last 2,000 players.'

I was knocked out at the end of day two in 609th place. Losing is never a pleasure, but taking my first shot at the world championship in this massive field I was chuffed to finish in the top 25 per cent. From then on I was happy to retreat to the cash games and 'funk for' the rest of the British players. Our top-placed finisher was my lovely friend Gary 'The Choirboy' Jones, who came seventeenth and won $175,000.

The eventual winner and new world champion is Greg Raymer from Connecticut, a patent lawyer who (of course) won his seat on the internet. I listened to his post-match interview, and can't pretend he is the most interesting man of all time. No tales of road gambling, mountain climbing or gangster hold-ups in Texas, just a careful explanation of patent law and some thanks to his wife. Poker is now legitimate, mainstream and popular with patent lawyers.

That was the last World Series to be held at Binion's Horseshoe. Earlier this year the casino was sold by the Binion family to the giant Harrah's chain. Next year, due to increasing numbers and the demands of TV, it will be held in the bigger, ritzier Rio Hotel. I sat at the old snack bar in Binion's, drinking a nasty cup of tea, thinking how much more luxurious it's going to be - and how much more massive still. Perhaps there will be 5,000 runners next time.