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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

July 15, 2006

The NEW World Series of Poker

In his short story The Monkey's Paw, William Wyman Jacobs wrote about tempting fate, about wanting to dictate or at the very least, control the outcome of the future. It was a story of wishes that didn't turn out so well. It's a story told and retold in many allegorical forms. Sometimes the tale drags through and ends in horrific tragedy, as with The Monkey's Pawn, while in other versions, the journey from wish to fulfillment to settlement is amusing, as with the Penny Marshall movie, Big, starring Tom Hanks as a little boy who wishes to be grown up.

The results don't really matter, unless you're into that guilt-trip thing, which I'm not. So don't fear that this is taking you on a journey of sorrow.

You see, I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or crawl away somewhere to wonder what happened. This whole new poker atmosphere, one we all wished for at one time or another, has me bewitched, bothered and, while not bewildered, at the very least, dazed. And the very point doesn't have anything to do with what everyone and his/her word processor, blog, and written column refers to as the sudden explosion of poker! (Is there an explosion that isn't sudden?) That's already a welcomed given.

Nah, it has to do only with the 2006 World Series of Poker now in full swing at the Rio in Las Vegas. It's exhausting!

Understand this whole outpouring of thought comes from someone who remembers when Flamingo Boulevard (where the Rio fronts) came to an abrupt and no-bridge-to-the-other-side drop-off just beyond the back boundary of Caesars Palace.

First there's the driving. Getting to the Rio, which on a non-poker spectacular day takes me about 25 minutes, now takes me that same 25 to get close and another 25 getting to the entrance and sometimes another 25 finding a parking space that doesn't cause meltdown while walking to the nearest door. (For those who have never experienced mid-July in Vegas, the temperature outside right now is 122 degrees and no breeze.) Okay, so maybe I've exaggerated a little (except for the temperature) but it's kind of busy out there.

Then, on arrival, there's this tremendous crowd of people. It's almost like standing on Las Vegas Boulevard at the stroke of midnight celebrating the New Year. Okay, so subtract a few tens of thousands of people and we're close to the same thing.

This is followed by the phenomenal popularity of the game and the people who play it. Just hearing someone in the crowd pointing to another player and identifying him or her is flabbergasting. "Hey, that's Phil Hellmuth. And look. Over there. It's Daniel Negreeanew." These guys (or rather their predecessors) hardly ever admitted they played poker for a living and now they are big-time stars!

Even AOL, which hosted numerous free tournaments leading up the WSOP, followed up with a photo gallery on its welcome page that featured poker and its 11 most eligible bachelors! (Although I think they left out a few hunks!)

It's crazy!

Of course, reasons exist for the way I perceive this rampant enthusiasm. It's akin to changing styles of music. My elders preferred the likes of Sinatra, Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman; I preferred Elvis, Joan Baez and Dylan; today's young ones prefer Coldplay, Nelly Furtado and Kanye West.

It's crazy, yes, but I'm not looking for the same outcome as the Monkey's Paw or Big. I don't want the horror and I certainly don't' want things to go back to where they were before we wished they'd be the way they are.

Poker is kind of like karate. It's something everybody from the youngest to the oldest, from the least educated to the educated and erudite can do and enjoy. (But we hope the toddlers aren't doing it for money and that the latter aren't slobbering all over the cards.)

I just think I'll have to hire a limo to take me to the Rio, a big bruiser of a guy to run interference through the crowd for me, and a zipper for my lips when I try to tell someone how to pronounce Daniel's Negraneau's last name.