Poker’s New Face

It was seen as a gritty pastime for middle-aged men, played in smoky back rooms with battered cards and grimy stacks of chips. The game reeked of flop sweat, cheap whiskey and chewed cigar stubs. And not long ago, in Las Vegas casinos, at least, it came close to dying out, eclipsed by other, more fashionable games like blackjack and roulette. No one, it seemed, played poker anymore. No one bright or fashionable, that is.

But suddenly, thanks to glitzy televised tournaments, a younger generation of hard-core players and a wildly popular version of the game known as Texas Hold ‘Em, poker’s luck has turned–spectacularly. “It’s red hot,” says Hard Rock Hotel casino executive Bart Pestrichello. Celebrities play it, Ivy League students play it; even educated kids play it. “It has exploded,” says actor Ben Affleck.

He ought to know. Affleck, who recently won $356,000 at the California State Poker Championship, is something of a poker poster boy as well as an amateur poker philosopher. He credits the media for the game’s revival and points to the Travel Channel’s widely watched World Poker Tour series. “There’s elimination,” says Affleck, “there’s victory, there’s defeat and there are real stakes involving everyday, normal people.”

And some very smart people as well. “The dotcom generation loves poker. It gives you a sense of control you don’t find in other games,” says Howard Schwartz, the proprietor of Las Vegas’ Gambler’s Book Shop. “It’s a roller coaster with an adrenaline high.” Schwartz links poker’s popularity to a natural migration from other games. “Blackjack players have gone to poker because the casinos are breathing down the necks of anybody who counts cards or increases their bets substantially. They’re so afraid that these M.I.T. kids are going to take them down for a million dollars a day that they’ve made blackjack a difficult game to enjoy.”

Jeff Shulman, president of Las Vegas-based Card Player magazine, says subscriptions have doubled to 7,500 in the past five months. He believes poker’s new players have brought a more vibrant spirit to the casinos. “Now there are a lot more maniacs and they’re winning much more often,” he says. “These kids don’t have any fear. They’re willing to move the chips around and they celebrate like crazy after they win a hand.”

Vegas’ first significant poker room opened in 1949 at the Golden Nugget casino. In the early 1960s, the big action shifted from downtown to the Strip, where casinos such as the Dunes and the Stardust offered a variation of the game called Seven-Card Lowball, also known as Razz. Then came the boom in blackjack and the beginning of poker’s decline. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, during Las Vegas’ ill-fated attempt to turn itself into a family destination, tourists seemed to have lost patience with the game’s sleazy Wild West flavor. With revenues declining, several casinos closed their poker rooms.

Then, within the past 18 months, after the explosion in Internet gambling, which usually takes the form of poker or horse racing, and the cable TV debut of the World Poker Tour, the game took off again. “The games are classy affairs with megabucks at stake, and there are a lot of new people in the game,” says World Poker Tour commentator Mike Sexton. “Poker is seen as a competition and a sport now, not as gambling per se.” These days, the Golden Nugget, whose poker rooms shut down in 1989, is holding tournaments seven nights a week.

One Nugget regular is Steve Kaufman, 58, a college professor and former rabbi from Cincinnati, Ohio, who keeps a second home in Las Vegas, and placed third at 2000’s World Series of Poker. Kaufman has wagered his chips in many places, including the big card clubs around Los Angeles, which offer fewer gaming options, but he prefers Sin City. “It’s more serious and professional here. It’s a careful, controlled game.”

Even casinos that never featured poker are opening new rooms. Within a few months, the Hard Rock will debut a new enclosed room with 10 to 12 tables offering rock ‘n’ roll poker. “There’ll be some rock memorabilia in the room, the cards will have a more neon look to them, you won’t hear the blaring music that’s on the main casino floor,” Pestrichello says. “And purple felt on the tables–I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Affleck, who also plays poker in Los Angeles, feels Las Vegas has a special charm. “The appeal of casinos is that there’s some glamour and some seediness,” he says. “Both those things appeal to something fundamental in the American psyche.” He favors the high-stakes games at the Bellagio, which he calls “the premier room, the biggest, most respected place to play: it’s the Taj Mahal of poker.” Pretty classy image there. The money is big in Las Vegas poker these days, and so are the egos. Of the winners, that is.