baltimoresun.com - The new face of poker

baltimoresun.com - The new face of poker: "The new face of poker" By John Vaughn Special To The Sun Everything that was once grand about Atlantic City seems to have washed out into the sepia tones of memory. The Steel Pier is gone. Miss America is a quaint relic in the time of Britney Spears and Extreme Makeover. Even saltwater taffy has no place in our low-carb world. But the casinos remain - those enormous, glittering respirators keeping the city alive even though its heart may have stopped beating long ago. And now the casinos are hitting the jackpot with No-Limit Texas Hold'em, the wildly popular brand of poker that seems to have swept the nation. Once a game associated with con men and criminals, poker is now the realm of celebrities playing for charity on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. ESPN covers the World Series of Poker as if it were the other World Series. Professional players considered degenerates as little as two years ago now hawk books on talk shows and have sitcom development deals. And there is an overwhelming demand - from curious amateurs to card-shark wannabes - to play the game. At the Tropicana Casino and Resort, 2,800 new players signed up for a Trop Poker Club Card in a recent three-month span. The Trump Taj Mahal averages more than a thousand tournament players a week. Walking through the glass doors of the Tropicana's Poker Turf Club, I felt like I had stepped into a fine gentleman's club. If it weren't for the plasma TVs and lack of smoke, I would have sworn Frank Sinatra was playing that night. Silver-haired men in expensive-looking suits directed me through rooms paneled in heavy mahogany and hunter green leather to a table where a neat stack of chips stood at attention. Those chips would soon be my chips. I was about to test my luck in a No-Limit Texas Hold'em tournament. Cards, please In Texas Hold'em, each player is dealt two hole cards, face down. Three cards are then turned up at once (the Flop), and two more cards are turned up individually (the Turn and the River). Each player makes the best five-card hand using his two hole cards and three of the five community cards. In No-Limit Hold'em, you can bet as much as you want, up to all of your chips, at any time. It's exciting - and dangerous. You can win or lose everything on one bet. Luckily, tournaments let you experience the thrill of No-limit Hold'em for as little as $20 and allow you to play with a lot more chips than you could otherwise afford. My $2,000 in tournament chips, for example, cost $50. The action is fast-paced, thanks to a rapidly increasing ante - called a "blind" - and players have the chance to win thousands of dollars for a relatively small investment. You can find a tournament every day of the week at one of Atlantic City's main poker rooms: The Borgata, Trump Taj Mahal and the Tropicana. While the game is the same, there are some important differences to keep in mind when deciding where to play. For instance, at the Borgata and Tropicana, if you get into trouble, you can buy more chips in the middle of a tournament - it's called a re-buy. The only way to get more chips at the Taj is to win them from someone else. Entering the fray I separated my chips by color and sized up my opponents: a college student who brought her boyfriend to play in his first tournament, some guys in their 30s who looked like they cared way too much, and a gaggle of older gentleman who looked like they couldn't care less. Flat-screen monitors hung around the Trop's poker room displaying the time left in the current round, the amount of the blinds and an enormous number "130." I asked the guy next to me what that number meant, and he told me that it was the number of people left in the tournament. "Great," I said. "Now everyone will see that big '129' when I make my perp walk out of here." No one laughed. I took a few hits early on, so I called for a re-buy. A hostess came over to the table. I gave her another $50, and the dealer handed me $2,000 in fresh tournament chips. If I could make it to the end of the third round, I could get an even better deal: That same $50 would let me add on 4,000 chips if I needed them. Add-ons and re-buys give players a break and increase the size of the prize pool, but many players don't like them. "They make the game too erratic," says Ken Gallo, a casual player from Woodland, N.J. "If someone gets knocked out, they can just re-buy back in, so they'll play crazy hands they shouldn't be playing." Easy for him to say. Gallo would go on to finish in the money at the Taj's tournament that night. I needed all the help I could get. My next hand was shaping up to be a monster: ace-king hole cards. I threw what felt like a very real $1,800 worth of chips at the center of the table. I thought the Atlantic Ocean surf had swelled over the Boardwalk right into the casino, but it was only my heart pounding inside my ears. A paunchy guy in a blue velour track suit and the undergrad's heavily gelled boyfriend called my bet. I twisted my face into the most menacing (but nonrevealing) scowl I could muster. The dealer turned over ace, seven, 10 in the Flop. I now had a commanding pair of aces. My hands went numb. My two adversaries tapped the table, indicating a check - meaning they did not want to bet - and waited to see what I would do. The white noise of riffling chips and murmured conversations vanished as eight sets of eyes bored in on me. I couldn't see or hear anything; I could only smell the fear at the table - unfortunately, I couldn't tell if it was mine. High rollers If you enjoy the pixilated pyramids and dancing fountains of the Atlantic City strip, then head to the Borgata. The dazzling new casino resort in the Marina district has more than met its promise to bring Vegas-style glamour to New Jersey. And the Borgata's poker room is definitely a high roller. In front of a luxurious waiting area replete with a full-service deli is the "Queue Enlister." Attractive young women wearing suits and headphones stand behind a granite counter the size of a small runway waiting to escort you to a game. Two enormous flat-screen monitors hang above their heads, discreetly listing the available games and the initials of the people waiting to get into them. As a warm-up for the Tropicana tournament later that day, I decided to sit down at a live, or "ring," game. In tournament play, you're in until you've lost everything or the tournament is over and you've won money. In a live game, you can cash out whenever you want. In addition, live games allow you to choose among various betting limits, and those limits don't change during the game. While the Borgata caters to a young, hip clientele, I faced off against the quintessential Atlantic City gambler: an elderly day-tripper who had arrived on a bus. Mary Green, who lives outside Philadelphia, plays at the Borgata because "it's a nicer crowd. I used to play at the Taj," she says, "but it's the same old people. They argue and fight a lot." Like millions of others, Mary watches poker on TV, and she plays for fun. "I'm not experienced," she says, "but I learn what to hold and what to fold." When I got up from the table two hours later, with only $7 left of my original $80, Mary was still playing. I'm pretty sure she had most of the money I lost. Taking a gamble Back at the Trop, with my commanding pair, I glanced at the $5,700 in the pot, fingered my dwindling stack of chips and made sure my ace was still in the hole. Mary Green and my lost $73 were a distant memory. "All in," I said, though my mouth was so dry I could barely speak. I pushed the remainder of my chips into the middle of the table. They don't call it "No-Limit" for nothing. When both of the players still in the hand called my bet, I knew I was in trouble. After someone goes "all in," all players still in the hand turn over their hole cards for all the world to see, and the rest is up to the dealer. My ace-king was up against an ace-seven and a pair of queens. My monster hand was now hiding under the bed. I had the queens beat, but those aces and sevens had me in a bad spot. The dealer turned over a five on the Turn. No help for anyone. And then, after a brief pause, he turned over the last card - the River - and my last chance. Many tables, long games The Taj Mahal is the biggest poker room in the city and the place to go for serious high-limit action. Outdated Arabic-themed crown molding and faded Rat Pack posters adorn the off-white walls of the cavernous room. But what the Taj lacks in decor it makes up for in excitement. When its 80 tables - nearly double that of any other poker room in the city - aren't being used for live games with betting limits up to $300, they are the scene of international tournaments like the Trump Classic and the U.S. Poker Championship. Tom Gitto, the Taj poker room manager, attributes the success of his room to the experience of his staff and the fact that the daily tournaments offer players more tournament chips - 5,000 - than any other casino. "Because we have so many tables, we can afford to let them play longer," he says of the poker players. Ken Gallo echoed the sentiment of many casual players. "I play at the Taj because it has the best players, and I want to play against the best." Scott Griffin, poker manager at the Tropicana, suggests it's not the best players that make the Taj so attractive, but the worst. "Everyone who thinks they know how to play poker but really doesn't goes to the Taj," he says. "And it only takes one fish at a table to make the game very attractive for real players, so they all follow them there." Exhilarating encounter I must have looked like something out of Finding Nemo at the Tropicana when, after pushing all of my chips into the pot, the dealer turned over the last card - a queen - and my young gel-headed opponent won the hand with three of a kind. I stood up from the table, wished everyone good luck and walked out under the mocking glow of the "110" flashing above my head. It's bad enough when the shooter rolls a seven at the craps table, or the blackjack dealer turns over a 21 to beat your 20, but you know going in that, ultimately, the house always wins. Getting knocked out of a poker tournament hurts because it's so personal. Those other players took my chips like bullies stealing a kid's lunch money. And the truth is, I loved every minute of it. My 90 minutes at the table cost me $115 - $50 buy-in, $50 re-buy and $15 entry fee - and it was worth every penny. No-Limit Texas Hold'em is a game of skill that requires patience, cunning and controlled aggression. Tournaments let you play the game in an environment that keeps the amount of real money at risk to a safe amount. The confrontational nature of competing against other players that makes a loss so painful also makes the game infinitely more exhilarating than watching the random spin of a roulette wheel or tumble of the dice. And unlike any other game in the casino, since you're not playing against the house, you have, at least in theory, a better chance to win. Getting there: From Baltimore, take I-95 north across the Delaware Memorial Bridge and follow Route 40 east to the Atlantic City Expressway. Take the expressway south to Atlantic City. No-Limit Texas Hold'em: You can find a tournament any day of the week in Atlantic City. Buy-in and entry fees range from $20 and $10, respectively, to $200 and $25, depending on the day of the week. In tournament play, all monies collected - excluding entry fees - are paid out. The total amount depends on the number of entrants, the cost of the buy-in and the number of re-buys and add-ons. Generally, winners can take home between $3,500 and $10,000.