TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

"I'm all in," he says, repeating a phrase that may come to define this decade the way "groovy" did the '60s and "greed is good" the '80s.

It's about 11:15 p.m. on a Tuesday at Parker's Casino in Shoreline, and Bishop is locked in a duel with Jack Carroll, an auto dealer, in a game of Texas Holdem, the most popular version of what is quickly becoming one of America's most popular activities — poker.

To the winner goes either $10,000 or a spot in the main event of the World Series of Poker (and its $10,000 entry fee).

Carroll looks at his two cards, rubs them on the table a few times, then pushes his smaller stack of chips in.

Bishop flips over his cards — a pair of 6s. Carroll flips his — a jack and an ace.

The dealer turns over three cards, or what is called "the flop," a term no longer associated solely with Vlade Divac and Manu Ginobili.

The middle of the three cards unveiled is another 6, giving Bishop an almost unbeatable hand.

As the reality sets in, Bishop happily announces that he's taking the trip, meaning a month from now he will play in the biggest poker game in the land.

Not bad for a guy who says that 18 months ago he'd never played the game.

Bishop won't be alone in Las Vegas.

As many as 7,000 people may enter the main event of the World Series of Poker, more than double that of a year ago and about eight times that of two years ago — as good of an indicator as any of the incredible surge in popularity of poker. Industry estimates are that 50 to 60 million Americans play poker at least once a month.

Many will be relative newcomers to the game such as Bishop, most of whom don't fit the old-time stereotype of the scruffy, cigar-chomping gambler, but who instead have been intrigued by the increasing visibility and availability of the game.

"I'd played blackjack and craps," he says. "But I'd literally never played poker before."

Bishop says a friend talked him into playing in a tournament in January 2004. They bought each other some books for Christmas and agreed that they'd split whatever they won. Bishop took first prize — earning $10,000 — and has been hooked ever since. He set a limit that if he lost $1,000 in a year he'd quit, but that hasn't happened yet.

Going back centuries

Poker of one sort or another has been around for centuries. The first versions appear to have originated in France and Germany. Many of the most common varieties of poker played today are thought to have been popularized by soldiers during the Civil War. "Community card" games such as Texas Holdem date to the 1920s.

In Holdem, players are dealt two cards face down. Then five community cards are dealt — the first three all at once, called "the flop," then two more dealt individually — "the turn" and "the river" — with betting following each deal. The player with the best five-card hand wins the pot.

In the signature move of No-Limit Texas Holdem, a player can decide to bet all his money — by announcing he's going "all in" — at any time after the first two cards are dealt.

The drama of the "all in" bet is part of the reason No-Limit Texas Holdem has been the main event of the World Series of Poker since 1970.

But it has only been in recent years that poker has achieved not only a full-fledged popularity but also respectability and credibility.

"There are people who used to think it was a smoke-filled, back-corner game," Carroll says. "But it isn't anymore."

What legitimized poker is the same thing that has legitimized almost everything else in our culture the past few decades — television.

When it was a fledgling network a few decades ago and aired just about anything, ESPN gave poker a shot as well. But it didn't take then, because nobody could tell what cards the players were holding.

That changed thanks to the invention a few years ago of what became known as the "hole card cam" — tiny cameras embedded in the table that allow viewers to see what cards each player has been dealt. The invention was the brainchild of Henry Orenstein, an 81-year-old Nazi concentration camp survivor, who thought the televised game needed a boost out of boredom.

Suddenly, the viewing audience could play along with the players themselves, second-guessing whether to raise, fold, check or go "all in."

"There's a huge difference in the popularity of poker today from even five years ago," says Adrian Hanauer, who owns the Seattle Sounders soccer team and plays poker regularly in big-time tournaments in Las Vegas and elsewhere. "And I think it can be narrowed to one very clear thing, and that's TV."

ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker — which includes more than 40 poker tournaments leading up to the main event — draws ratings comparable to Major League Baseball and the NBA. Considering the network doesn't have to pay the same kinds of rights fees it does for those sports, the Series ranks as one of its biggest moneymakers. The Travel Channel, FSN, Bravo and the Game Show Network also telecast poker regularly, making it almost impossible to switch on the tube and not find a game on.

Television coverage not only made the game fun to watch — especially when all the hands where not much happens were edited out — but also showed it to be a game just about anybody can theoretically master.

The past two winners of the main event — Chris Moneymaker and Greg "Fossilman" Raymer — each had day jobs (Moneymaker was an accountant, Raymer a corporate patent attorney), but beat the pro superstars and now are superstars themselves.

Many cite Moneymaker's victory — he qualified for the WSOP through a $40 satellite tournament online and ended up taking home $2.5 million — as a turning point in the game's popularity.

"When Chris Moneymaker won, that let everybody know that anybody could win this thing," says Daniel Negreanu, one of a growing number of full-time players who is becoming famous as well as rich. Negreanu has won more than $6 million playing poker.

Suddenly, people everywhere became convinced that riches and fame could await them, too, if they could simply figure out how to play Texas Holdem.

Dreams of riches

In the Seattle area, many players head to tournaments like the one at Parker's last week. In all, 110 players paid an entry fee of $275 for a chance to win $10,000 or a seat in the WSOP. Many were essentially rookies, such as Andy Meltebeke, a coffee-stand owner from Mill Creek. He says he began playing in tournaments seven months ago, becoming interested "after watching it on TV like everybody else."

He bought a couple books — about the only thing growing as quickly as the number of players interested in poker are the number of tomes instructing people how to play it — did well in a tournament "and got the fever," he says. He made it to the final table Tuesday at Parker's.

Many newcomers turn to online poker sites, a trend that frightens gambling addiction counselors who wonder if television's legitimization of poker isn't masking the obvious danger — for every dollar won there has to be a dollar lost by someone else.

But Negreanu wonders what's the difference between poker and playing the stock market or putting a bunch of money in a business.

"Everything's a gamble," he says.

Those who play professionally say handling money is one of the prime skills that has to be mastered for success. Negreanu says coping with the emotional swings of good luck and bad luck is something that separates the pros from everyone else.

He says those who do it for a living have to be highly disciplined. Negreanu doesn't drink when he plays and sets prearranged limits for how long he will gamble, reasoning he loses his mental sharpness after awhile.

But Negreanu's is the kind of tale that is draws fortune-seekers to the game.

He grew up in Toronto, where he sometimes skipped school to play pool for money before gravitating to poker.

Negreanu moved to Vegas when he was 23, quickly becoming one of the game's biggest winners due in part to his uncanny ability to read other players, to guess what they might have in their hands — a trait he says is a must for any successful player.

"One day I woke up and said, 'I guess this is what I do for a living,' " he says.

Now he is a one-man poker conglomerate with a multimedia career that also includes video games and a syndicated column (The Seattle Times carries it on Saturdays). All that pays him enough to live comfortably even if he never wins another tournament.

Like an increasing number of players, Negreanu is becoming as famous as one of the basketball or hockey players whose jerseys he often wears while competing.

"When televised poker became hot and got great ratings, and that's just been the last three years or so, that's when things started to really change," Negreanu says. "No longer was I able to just go to a tournament and not have to sign autographs and take pictures and things like that."

Seattle is no exception

The poker explosion in this state owes much to the 1991 agreement to allow Las Vegas-style casinos on Indian reservations, which led to laws allowing some non-tribal card rooms.

Parker's, for instance, was a dance hall for years before becoming a casino in 1995. It didn't add a poker room, however, until 2003, once management saw how the game was taking off.

"Because of the popularity of poker, we knew it would be successful," says Charlie Li, the manager of Parker's poker room. Aside from the regular nightly games, Parker's hosts big-money tournaments roughly once a month and "we fill every seat every time," Li says.

There is also now a Web site devoted to poker in this area — www.seattle-poker.com — unveiled recently by Luke Comstock, a 29-year-old computer programmer from Olympia who took up the game two years ago.

"I run into people I went to high school with and they say, 'Oh yeah, I play poker now, too,' " Comstock says.

Seattle even jumped on the celebrity poker craze last winter when KIRO-TV hosted an all-star poker show — in which all earnings were donated to charity — featuring players from the Mariners and Seahawks as well as other area non-sports celebrities. The show drew surprisingly good ratings, and another series is reportedly in the works.

"We play all the time," says pitcher Joel Pineiro, who was one of the Mariners to take part in the all-star poker show. "We play blackjack, poker. It gets your mind off baseball. It gets you thinking about something else."

Pineiro says the games don't "really get that serious" in terms of anyone losing big money. But Pineiro says many of his teammates know their stuff, such as reliever Julio Mateo, renowned for his bluffing.

"He can have 2-7 and he'll be betting $400 out of nowhere," Pineiro says with a laugh.

It's not that easy

Pros warn that those who simply watch poker on television shouldn't expect to run to a casino and have immediate success.

For one thing, the television shows don't convey how much patience is necessary to win big consistently.

"That one hour you see is probably really 10 hours of poker," says Hanauer, who recently won $30,000 in the Bellagio Five Star Poker Classic Season Championship in Las Vegas. "For every hand they show, there are 10-15-20 where everybody folded."

Indeed, the Parker's tournament is a study in persistence.

The 110-man field is whittled to 20 for Tuesday's final. The competition begins at 7 p.m. and slowly the field thins further.

But it's not until 10:20 that it finally becomes a two-man event.

Bishop and Carroll, who calls himself one of the old-timers who was playing before it was chic, spend about an hour folding hand after hand interrupted by the occasional raise or "all in" bet, with the cards always favoring the smaller stack.

Finally, after about an hour's standoff, Bishop draws his three 6s.

A month from now he'll take his seat at the World Series of Poker's main event, hoping to become the next Moneymaker or Raymer, the everyman turned famous thanks to a few good hands.

"How many average Joes can play in the NFL or for the Mariners or things like that?" Negreanu asks. "But poker offers everybody a chance to say, 'Hey, I'm a superstar.' "