World Series of Poker

It’s fair to say that in the past three years the game of poker hasn’t just exploded – it’s gone nuclear.

This enormous virtual mushroom cloud now hovers above a world which is inhabited by millions of online poker players from almost 200 countries, and a huge chunk of a business which is estimated to be worth $25 billion a year.

Saturation TV coverage of a panoply of poker events has increased awareness of the game and created millions of new fans of the felt.

And at the very apex of this sits the World Series of Poker. In the US the WSOP is almost as big as the Super Bowl, commanding up to three prime-time televised slots a day. Its top players are celebrities – with exotic names such as Fossilman, Jesus and the Brat – and they are recognised by cab drivers and bartenders across the US. Despite the popularity of the game in Britain, famous British players who enjoy superstar status in Vegas return here to almost total obscurity.

The WSOP entry figures tell their own story. Since its inception in 1970, when there were six entrants, the number of hopefuls paying $10,000 for a tilt at ‘The Big One’ has risen steadily each year.

When Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson won it in 2000 he beat 511 other players, while 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker (the only famous poker player to need no nickname) was up against 838 entrants. In 2004 the figure had risen to 2,576, while last year saw 5,619 hopefuls.

The number of entries for the 2006 WSOP has been capped at 8,000, giving an estimated first prize to the winner of $10m – a purse that is unmatched anywhere in sport outside boxing.

The winner will have earned it. He or she will have been playing the highest possible level of poker, involving supreme concentration, complex mental calculations and flawless emotional control, for nine gruelling days.

The World Series, which is actually an eight-week festival will be played in the Rio up on the ‘Strip’ – 43 events in all, culminating in the Main Event, in which the popular Texas hold’em variant is the name of the game.

To win any event is special and a bracelet – a revoltingly gaudy and very Vegas chunk of gold and diamonds – is considered, by poker players to be at least the equivalent of a gold medal at the Olympic games. There is no silver and bronze, but for the remaining top ten per cent of the field there is the consolation of finishing ‘in the money’.

Nowadays it’s all a long way from its shabby, downtown origins in Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel and Casino, several miles away down Las Vegas Boulevard. This move from the low-life end of Vegas aptly demonstrates how the World Series has helped to position poker as a socially acceptable and corporately sponsored activity light years away from the dingy, unsafe end of the social spectrum.

The World Series was the brainchild of Benny Binion – a legendary ex-bootlegger and gambler from Texas – whose mantra was never to turn away a bet, however large.

In 1949 Binion, a natural-born PR genius, staged a match on a raised dais in the front of his casino between the world’s two finest players – Johnny Moss, who won the WSOP three times, and legendary gambler Nick ‘The Greek’ Dandalos.

The game ran for five months, and casino-goers poured in to watch, as millions of dollars was shunted back and forth across that famous table.

In the end, The Greek pushed back his chair and conceded a $4m loss with the now-famous line: ‘Mr Moss, I have to let you go.’

Twenty years on, trying to recreate the success of the game, Binion issued an invitation to the top six in the world to compete for the World Series. Moss won it after being voted best player by his rivals, also going on to triumph in the next two, which switched to a knock-out format. He remains one of only two players to have landed three titles, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated ever again.

Last year, most of the Main Event was hosted at the Rio and this year, due to the event’s sheer size presenting intractable logistical problems, will be the first that none of the action will be at Binion’s.

The winner will not only become a multi-millionaire and an instant celebrity – the past three champs were complete unknowns on the US circuit – but he or she will also take on a new life.

Best of all, if you can raise $10,000, or qualify online via any one of a million more affordable ‘satellite’ tournaments to win a seat, then it could – just could – be you.