T he grumpiest man I ever knew was an old poker pro in las vegas named Sarge Farris, who was universally understood to be the best five-card-stud player in the world.
Unfortunately for Farris, no one had played five-card stud seriously for ages. Chances are, he wasn’t too sunny even in the days when he could find a game, but by the time I met him in 1980, he was also universally understood to be one of the world’s leading curmudgeons.
The game of choice for high-stakes poker had already become Texas Hold ‘em. And that was before the hold ‘em boom of the last few years, which has turned the legendary World Series of poker into what it is today:
A TV show.
The World Series is “American Idol” for pallid people who’ve spent too much time hunched over something — a poker table, if they’re old-school, or a computer, if they’re part of the new wave who discovered they could play online without the inconvenience of getting dressed.
With the last and flashiest event of the annual series of tournaments under way, this seems like a sensible time to explain a bit about the game and the event itself. I wasn’t there at the beginning in 1970, but I knew some of the people who were.
They used to rope Sarge Farris into playing hold ‘em, even though it wasn’t his strong suit. What else was he supposed to do with his time? Watch game shows?
poker face for TV
No-limit Texas Hold ‘em has everything television needs, neatly packaged around green oval tables.
Winners. Losers. Fast action. Colorful characters, drama, tidy story lines, huge bets.
The best poker players write books, sell signature model sunglasses and endorse poker Web sites.
You could say they are almost like actors, except that it’s actors who want to be like them. Ben Affleck, Dean Cain, Shannon Elizabeth, Louie Anderson and Brad Garrett all entered this year’s World Series.
Jennifer Tilly not only plays — very well, thank you — she lives with Dublin-born poker pro Phil (The Unabomber) Laak.
When I covered the early stages of the World Series 25 years ago, the vast media contingent consisted of me and a guy with a video camera the size of a bazooka. The World Series was played downtown at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, and the entrants were easy enough to impress that Benny Binion wowed them by putting crab legs on their players-only buffet line.
About 80 players ponied up the $10,000 entry fee for the final tournament, a no-limit hold ‘em contest known as the Big Game, the Main Event or simply by the catch-all title of World Series. Stu Ungar, a stunningly scrawny former New York gin whiz , won the championship and $375,000.
When the 2006 Big Game began Friday at the 51-story, off-Strip Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, a record 8,725 gamblers were in the field. The last player sitting when the tournament ends Aug. 10 will collect $11 million.
Editing furiously, minions from ESPN will have Big Game telecasts ready to roll by Aug. 22. Or, if you can’t wait, you can watch the duel at the final table on live pay-per-view for $24.95.
ESPN has telecasts of the World Series’ various tournaments scheduled through Halloween. That’s in addition to this year’s repeats and repeats of tournaments from past years, and does not include all the other poker competitions on what seems like every cable network from Bravo to the Travel Channel.
Show ‘em
Eager to put more rumps in seats around the poker tables of las vegas and Reno, card sharps and casino managers recognized decades ago that they needed to promote the game.
They tried making a spokesman of Amarillo Slim Preston, an old-time hustler who once won a bet by riding a camel into a casino, but he wasn’t much of a player anymore. The buttoned-down frat kid champions of the next wave, like Bobby Baldwin and Chip Reese, were too intimidating.
It took a TV executive to finally figure out the secret a few years ago: Show everyone’s hole cards.
Thanks to tiny cameras in the railings of the tables, viewers can now see exactly what former lawyer Greg (FossilMan) Raymer, the guy with the weird sunglasses, has for ammunition when he throws a $400,000 raise at Chris (Jesus) Ferguson, the computer science Ph.D. with the long hair and the cowboy hat.
It helps that Texas Hold ‘em is a fundamentally simple game, even if it doesn’t seem that way when you’ve just been reraised by a guy you thought was falling asleep.
Rules of the game
Legend says hold ‘em was invented by cowboys who needed a poker derivative that could include lots of players without exhausting a deck of cards.
A hand starts with each player receiving two hole cards. After a round of betting, the dealer lays three cards, known as the flop, face up in the middle of the table. Another round of betting precedes another up-card, known as fourth street or the turn. Then come another round of betting, the laying of the final card — called the river or fifth street — and yet another opportunity to bet.
What sets hold ‘em apart from most other poker games is that all players use the five cards face-up on the table, combining them with their two hole cards to make the best five-card hand. Since so many cards are common knowledge, bluffs come as frequently as Sarge Farris frowns.
To jump-start the action before each deal, the two players to the dealer’s left set out mandatory bets known as the small blind and big blind. At your average kitchen game, the small blind might be 50 cents and the big blind $1. The player to the left of the big blind must match the $1, fold or raise, and betting continues clockwise.
In tournaments, the blinds increase regularly, making it an expensive proposition to sit and wait for a great starting hand on the order of two aces or the ace-king combo known as Big Slick.
A growing pot
The first World Series of poker did not include a no-limit hold ‘em showdown. Binion gathered 35 poker pros at his casino in 1970, and after a week or so of high-stakes games, they voted Johnny Moss the best player on the planet and gave him a silver cup.
The next year, Moss — a fair-sized grump himself — won a tournament and left with the title again, along with $30,000. Entries and prize money have grown dramatically since. By 1983, when a delightfully forthright failed accountant from Grand Rapids named Tom McEvoy won the event, first prize was $580,000.
The prize jumped to $1 million in 1991 and had inflated to $2.5 million when Chris Moneymaker won in 2003. He was a rookie who earned his way into the Big Game by spending $39 to enter a tournament online, and he topped a field of 838 players.
Apparently on the theory that if Moneymaker can win, anyone can, the field more than tripled in 2004, and jumped to 5,619 last year. After another quantum leap this year, it’s clear that the World Series of poker has become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon.
Nah, probably not.
By Neal Rubin
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