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The
game is Texas Hold ’em. It’s just poker, but don’t
tell that to the players. They come to bars to
drink, laugh and try their hand at the game that has
swept the country. Some are soft-spoken and
courteous. Other are overly confident — the kind of
players who whistle for their drinks. They range
from the mid-20s to those old enough to be
grandparents.
All over the area, bars have started posting
signs advertising Hold ’em games, raking in
customers by capitalizing on the craze for Texas
Holdem.
The game became widely known when it appeared
in the 1998 movie “Rounders.” (“In the game of life
... play the hand you’re dealt.”) A few years later,
the Travel Channel and ESPN began broadcasting the
no limit Texas Hold ’em tournament from the World
Series of Poker. The game exploded.
Chris Moneymaker, last year’s World Series of
Poker winner, may be the biggest reason for the
craze. Moneymaker, down to $40 at one point,
eventually won an amazing $2.5 million.
Now, everybody wants to be a Moneymaker. “I
think a lot of people relate to him,” Terry Hughes,
a regular at the Hold ’em games Pilot’s Pub on West
Congress Street. “They think, ‘Hey, I can do that --
win a couple of million of dollars.’ Probably not,
but hey, that’s the American dream.”
Marko Setko, the organizer of the nightly
Holdem games at Shannon’s Bar, said people come in
for more than just cards.
“People used to go bowling to socialize. Now
they play poker,” Setko said. “We see people of all
types here. Lawyers, doctors and hustlers. We get
them all.”
Last Monday, Thomas Kloss, floor manager at
Pilot’s Pub, watched 40 players, each of whom put up
at least $10 to buy in. “I love it. I watch them
every week,” he said. “I wish I could play, but
unfortunately, I work here, and that would be kind
of biased.”
The pub’s two weekly
Texas Holdem tournaments actually
began a few months ago, when Kloss and his boss
began a game with a few friends. Kloss said he
expects it to continue to grow. Many players started
with games at the home of a friend. That’s where it
all began for Matthew Hernandez.
Hernandez was one of the younger players one
recent Tuesday at Pilot’s. He’s been playing since
December, when he won a house game with a $30 buy-in
and 12 competitors. Afterwards, he discovered the
weekly games at Pilot’s.
“The second week here, I won the tournament,”
he said, and then the game became something else to
him — a source of entertainment. “I’d rather spend
$15 here instead of going to dinner and a movie,”
Hernandez said. “At least this way, I can double or
triple what I put into it.”
“It’s a good way to meet different people,”
said Collin Schlabach, another Pilot’s regular. “I
think that’s the best part. You can sit down with
people you’ve never met for four or five hours and
just play. I think that’s pretty cool.”
Shannon’s Bar has been hosting games every
night of the week since November. In a closed room
—“Card players only please” — two, long Vegas-style
tables are set up, and two others lean against the
wall.
The place sees a lot of action, Setko said.
The game at Shannon’s tends to draw players who
don’t worry about the $40 minimum buy-in and the
long stretches at the table. But less experienced
players are at the tables there, too. That’s
something Pat Jeffries, a regular at Shannon’s, is
counting on.
“I think it’s great that a lot more people are
getting into it because that means there’s a lot
more money and a lot more bad card players, which is
good for me,” he said. The atmosphere at Pilot’s Pub
is a little more relaxed, less frenzied and less
crowded. The games can still be intense, however,
and last-minute comebacks aren’t uncommon.
That’s what happened to Schlabach. He lost all
his chips on a bad play early in the game a few
Tuesdays ago and had to buy back in. The $10 buys
three chips, but with those three chips, Schlabach
made it all the way to the last table among the
Texas Holdem players who stayed alive
— and kept their money —longest.
Money is made and money is lost, and yet the
people always return, said Rodney LaRue, full-time
Shannon’s dealer. “It’s making me happy because I
get to stay close to the action without spending my
money,” LaRue said. |
