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Most Recent Online Casino News
Know When to Hold 'Em Online Poker Play
Before this year, my only experience with poker was at basketball
camp when I was 12. We played during rest periods with Skittles for
chips and about seven different wild cards per hand. Although fun, the
game paled by comparison to other leisure pursuits, such as sleeping,
and I never gave it much thought after that. Yet, during the past year,
I have unexpectedly changed my tune. I've joined a weekly card game. I
waste hours surfing online poker sites. I try to drop poker phrases like
"bad beat" and "the nuts" into casual conversation. When I won $140 at
the table in February, I spent weeks regaling everybody I knew with
chapter and verse of my victory. Most reacted with raised eyebrows and
condescension, but similarly afflicted friends of mine understood,
greeting the story with measured awe, as if I were Amarillo Slim.
These days poker – specifically Texas hold 'em, the best version of
the venerable game – is enjoying an unexpected renaissance among
Americans in general, and twenty-somethings in particular. It is newly
ubiquitous on television: The World Series of Poker, a single event
which took place last May, is replayed on ESPN with obsessive frequency
10 months after it ended. The World Poker Tour, another set of
tournaments located in casinos around the country, got picked up by the
Travel Channel last year. In the fall, Bravo introduced its heavily
promoted "Celebrity Poker Showdown" program, betting on viewers being
riveted by a fifth-street showdown between Timothy Busfield and Coolio.
But perhaps anecdotal evidence speaks louder: Three years ago, when I
was a sophomore at Cornell University, there wasn't a game to be had. By
the time, I graduated, I could choose from several different games every
night of the week.
Read the
entire article at:
AlterNet.org
2004 Online Casino News Archive
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