My New Addiction

  Over the weekend I developed an addiction.  I wandered into the path of a very dangerous bullet.  It is so dangerous, in fact, that I’m reluctant to tell you about it.  Any addiction worth its salt should be full of risk.  It should be able to bleed you of everything you own, everything you value; it should promise you the world and fail miserably at delivering.  And by those standards, my new addiction is the granddaddy of them all.  Or, at the very least, it has potential.

  Over the weekend I became a poker addict.  Well, sort of.  I don’t play poker, I watch other people play it on TV.  Sure, it sounds harmless enough.  But, to use narcotics lingo, poker-watching is a “gateway drug.”  I don’t currently play poker because I don’t think I’m good at poker.  However, with every two-hour poker tournament I watch on TV, my bravado is rising.  And one day in the not-so-distant future I will be playing poker.

  Now, despite being carried on ESPN2 and the Fox Sports Networks, poker is not a sport.  It’s competitive like a sport, but the players are sweating for all the wrong reasons.  Poker is not a sport, it’s a game.  And don’t believe what you’ve heard—it’s not a gentleman’s game.  Whether you are playing with cousins and uncles at a family reunion or at the high-stakes table at the Bellagio, poker is a game dominated by crooks, thieves, outlaws and scoundrels.  Lying, bluffing and pick-pocketing are richly rewarded.  Good Samaritans, little old ladies and members of the clergy have no business at the poker table.  It is unwelcoming to virtue.  Bono and Jimmy Carter would suck at poker.  Martha Stewart could clean house (so to speak).

  My recent obsession began Friday morning before work, when I read an article in The New Yorker about three professional poker players.  Saturday afternoon, I watched a two-hour celebrity poker match on Bravo.  Sunday evening, I spent another two hours watching the pros play in the Five Diamond World Poker Classic.  After that, I read another article in the most recent Rolling Stone about Dutch Boyd, a former child prodigy who graduated from law school at 18, only to become a high-stakes professional poker player.

  Professional poker is producing almost as many millionaires under the age of 25 as the NBA is.  These up-and-comers are cutting their teeth in online poker rooms, a huge industry that sees over $150 million change hands on any given day.  And a new generation of math nerds is learning to play the odds in a very, very lucrative way.

  Five years ago, No Limit Texas Hold ’em was all but dead.  Now, it’s the hottest thing going in casinos across the country.  And it recently became a huge television phenomenon, starting with the Travel Channel’s coverage of the World Poker Tour in 2003.  In a recent week, 38 hours of poker was televised on 5 different networks.

  This weekend, check it out.  I’d like to know I’m not the only one in town watching poker on TV.

-From Pulse
   July 14, 2005