Recently, people’s favorite phrases have gradually changed from “You’ve got mail” and “That’s my final answer” to “All in” (with the hand gesture, of course).
It seems as though you can’t cross the street without overhearing someone else’s conversation about the Texas hold’em hand that he held the night before. Poker has moved into people’s social lives (and for some, their professional ones, too) just like steroids move through a Major League Baseball locker room.
The blitz of the poker popularity must be attributed to the 2003 World Series of Poker, which found airtime between the Killerspin Extreme Table Tennis Championships and the World’s Strongest Man competition on ESPN2. Texas hold’em caught on like the bobblehead fad, and now tapes of Chris Moneymaker taking down Sammy Farha are on almost as often as “The Fresh Prince.”
Initially, poker seems perfectly fit for ESPN2 — it’s not much of a sport, kind of like a spelling bee competition that once in a while finds its time on the tube, but for some reason, people will end up watching a couple of guys behind a pair of Oakleys play cards and the viewers will argue that it’s only a game of luck and shouldn’t be on TV.
However, poker does have its ties to the sports world. It’s hard to liken a poker game to baseball (although you could make a stretch and say the dealer is the one pitching the cards and the betters take their hacks at the plate), but a card game is a form of competition. When you sit down at a table, you want to take down the guy who can barely reach over his stack of chips just as badly as Mike Piazza wants to go yard on a Roger Clemens fastball.
“Baseball is like a poker game,” Jackie Robinson once said. “Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing. Nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.”
A guy might double his money at his first sitting at a poker game, but it takes more than just the luck of the draw to win consistently. As Matt Damon says in the movie “Rounders,” “People insist on calling it luck,” and it’s not completely a luck game. Other than the two cards you possess in your hold’em hand, factors like position, your opponents’ betting styles and bluffing are just as important in a poker game as the ace you’re holding. Poker is gambling (which is why Pete Rose is probably a pretty good poker player), but knowledge of the game will reduce the amount of luck necessary and result in winning more often than losing.
I don’t know if the poker phenomenon will hang around for a while or if people will get bored of it like any trend. But as long as it’s here, people will continually debate whether it belongs on TV and if it’s a game of luck or skill. And as long as it’s here, just deal me in.
