Mention of the World Series once exclusively evoked runs, hits and errors.
But that's the old World Series.
The new World Series, at least new in the consciousness of millions of Americans, has a far different lexicon: flop, turn and river. Also, all-in, on tilt and bad beat.
The 36th World Series of Poker, the marquee event of the card craze that has saturated TV and even elbowed its way onto sports pages, begins its championship finale Thursday at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas with an expected record-shattering field of 6,600 competitors. With each occupied seat representing a $10,000 buy-in, the total prize pool will be more than $62 million. The winner will earn $7.4 million, and every player who survives to the final table of nine will walk away a millionaire.
The main event, the $10,000 No-limit Texas Hold 'em World Championship, is actually the denouement of a series of 45 individual poker tournaments of varying styles and buy-ins, which will have a total prize pool exceeding $100 million. That makes the six-week WSOP probably the richest competition in the country, outstripping most major golf tournaments, horse races and prize fights - and certainly the players' share of that other World Series.
"Nobody knows what the future of poker will be," said Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, whose black cowboy hat and beard help make him one of the more recognizable stars on the card-playing scene. "But no one - not the game's biggest promoters - could have predicted this."
Entries for this year's final event, which will run for about 10 days, are more than double last year's field of more than 2,500, and that group tripled the previous year of 839.
The 2003 championship was the seminal occasion for poker's run to pop culture obsession when a then-unknown, 27-year-old accountant from Tennessee with the Dickensian name of Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million and the coveted gold bracelet that goes with any WSOP victory after he had qualified for the tournament with a $39 investment in an Internet satellite game.
That a player with virtually no big-time experience and a meager starting stake could catapult to rock star status helped touch off a poker-playing frenzy that reaches from the world's ritziest casinos to high school lunchrooms and college dorms.
Orin Starn, a Duke University professor who teaches a course in sports anthropology, said the rise of poker speaks to broader societal mores and values.
