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Teri Braun stroked her chips
for an extra second before tossing them all to the center of the table. "I'm
all in," she declared, risking her winnings from the last four hours for a
shot at $6,000. Then she laid down her pair of kings, and the men at the
table groaned in defeat.
It was a Saturday-night game of Texas Holdem, the poker game that has
exploded into the nation's casinos, living rooms and home computers in the
last two years. Braun wasn't at a card house, but at her home in Leucadia.
And the $6,000 wasn't real ---- it was all in chips.
Braun and her husband, David, host invitation-only tournaments for friends
every two weeks. Players pay a $20 buy-in for a shot at the community
jackpot, which is divvied up to the top players at the end of the night.
Multiple buy-ins are allowed early, if a player loses it all and wants to
get back in.
Michael Delgado hovered behind the table, holding a beer and proudly
announcing that he was "the first guy to lose."
"Worst-case scenario, you lose $60," Delgado said. "If you're smart, you can
play $20 for a couple of hours. You're not at a casino losing your ass."
Home games like this one are legal in California, so long as the host
doesn't make any extra money from the games. All the money won must come
from the player-funded pot.
Higher stakes
John Slavin, 30, has been playing poker since he was a teenager in Rancho
Bernardo. Back then, he could hardly find a game.
"Nowadays, people call me everyday and say, 'Hey, do you wanna get into a
home game?' Every day."
But many players, like Slavin, get bored with low-action home games and move
on to higher stakes at professional venues. Two years ago, Slavin got
serious about poker.
He plays Holdem at local Indian casinos at least three times a week, he
said. The buy-ins are higher: $50, $100, $200. Winning those rounds gets a
free ticket to higher-stakes tournaments.
Slavin is confident but not cocky, and he has thousands in winnings to back
it up, he said. In February, he played in a $30,000 tournament and took home
a respectable $3,500. Last month, he outlasted about 400 people to take 15th
place and win almost $1,200 at Viejas Casino's Southern California Poker
Tour, which airs on television next month.
At that tournament, Slavin wore a T-shirt that the cameramen loved: "Why
work when you can play poker?"
"When I need to make rent, and I need to make money to pay bills, I feel
pretty comfortable going to a tournament and making a thousand bucks," he
said.
When he leaves for the casino, he said, friends tease him about his "second
job."
"This is our little inside joke. I say, 'Oh, I'm off to my office.' Poker's
been paying my bills for the last six months."
Slavin is a hotel valet attendant, but wants to make poker a full-time
career. He plans to move to Las Vegas in a few months and become a dealer
there.
Cashing in
That move would be bold ---- but not unheard-of.
Several years ago, Chris Ferguson chose the same path. Ferguson is a poker
superstar, known as "Jesus" for his long, brown hair and beard.
Six years ago, he received a Ph.D. in computer science at UCLA. Mom and Dad
thought he might do something more conventional with his degree.
"The family wasn't all that happy. They didn't think it was all that
productive," Ferguson said.
But it is lucrative. Today, Ferguson is a multimillionaire who wins
tournaments around the world. Early last month, at Harrah's Rincon Casino in
Valley Center, he won a 13-hour marathon game of the World Series of Poker.
The buy-in: $10,000. His prize: $655,220.
Ferguson is one of a growing number of celebrity players who never expected
to become famous by playing cards. The World Series of Poker is broadcast on
ESPN, and the World Poker Tour, a wildly popular series, airs on the Travel
Channel.
"There's something about being on TV that changes people's mind," Ferguson
said over lunch at Rincon, frequently interrupted by fans looking for
autographs or suggesting menu items. "That's strange for me, because I'm the
same guy I was three years ago."
In the cards
The surge in poker popularity began in spring 2003, Ferguson said, when the
first season of the WPT aired. Poker was on television before, but the card
cams ---- hidden cameras that reveal every player's hand ---- got people
watching.
"Without knowing what people have, it's like watching paint dry," Ferguson
said. "They don't know who to root for."
Texas Holdem is one of hundreds of variation of poker ---- so is why is it
the only one on the tube?
"It's a great game," Ferguson said. "And it's pretty easy to put on TV."
Players are each dealt two cards face down for a round of betting. Three
communal cards, the flop, are turned over for more betting. A total of two
more community cards and bets ---- the turn and then the river ---- are
revealed next. The economy of the cards and the fast action of the game make
for great TV, Ferguson said.
It also makes for lightning-fast Internet play, which many players consider
to be a huge part of poker's popularity. Ferguson designs software for
FullTiltPoker.com, a Web site where real money is bet. Customers can play
no-limit games or bet as little as 5 cents.
"You could play 300 hands an hour. You just learn poker that much faster,"
said Ferguson, who learned the game himself in text-only chat-room versions
of the game 15 years ago. "In this Internet age, there are some really good
players I've never seen before."
Ferguson said players can learn 90 percent of the skills they need online
---- but the crucial 10 percent must be learned at the table. Online players
never have to handle chips, speak politely or maintain a poker face, and it
shows when they get to a real table, he said.
'Business almost doubled'
All this popularity pleases Bob Moyer, the general manager of Oceans 11, a
non-Indian card house in Oceanside. There are only 10 others in California.
"When the Indian reservations expanded, we lost initially 10 or 11 percent
of our business," Moyer said. The game's resurgence came when the first
season of WPT aired.
"When that happened, our business, within 6 months, almost doubled."
Everyone is playing more, Moyer said, including women.
"Probably, for every 10 men, there's one lady who plays," he said. "Before,
you never saw a lot of ladies playing poker. We offer small tournaments
every day for beginners to come in. That draws a lot of females."
John Slavin persuaded his girlfriend to play, even though she had never
gambled before meeting him. Now she's winning home tournaments.
"She's totally excited about this. She watches on TV with me," Slavin said.
"I have the support of her, as well. If I come home broke after losing 500
bucks or something, she doesn't yell at me."
Moyer has been in the business for 33 years, and he has watched poker evolve
from a seedy underground game to a mainstream family activity. At Oceans 11,
card rooms aren't smoky and foreboding ---- they're well-lit, clean and
inviting. And every table is under the watchful eyes of security cameras.
Bonding and betting
Marc Sanna, visiting the Rincon poker tournament from Orlando, Fla., said
poker is an opportunity to bond with his 14-year-old son, Alec. They play
together at the computer, having started with $5 buy-ins at PartyPoker.com
and then raising the stakes.
"After a couple of months, we were really in the money," Sanna said.
Alec's mom is not thrilled. "She doesn't like gambling, period," Sanna said.
But he said he monitors his son's bets and uses the game as a teaching tool
for money management. "I let him know all the pitfalls," Sanna said.
Alec wants to grow up to be a professional poker player, an ambition his dad
supports but calls a "20,000-to-1 shot."
Those odds don't daunt Slavin. He insists he is not a compulsive gambler,
although he says it's a very addictive game.
"So far, I'm not like the kind of guy who has to sell my property to go play
cards," Slavin said. "I don't mind if I go broke sometimes. I have plenty of
chances to make it up."
Slavin, like any amateur or professional cardplayer, has indeed gone broke.
Once he took a $2,500 check to a casino and lost it all in four days of
gambling. He wasn't fazed.
Some might see his attitude as false confidence, but he sees it as business
savvy.
"That's $2,500 that I invested ---- I think it's a great learning
experience," Slavin said.
"This is like a business. You have to invest money into this game, by buying
books, by taking the time to read them, by losing money, by playing the
game.
"I have no doubt in my mind that it will pay off."
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