Shooting Stars A Comment On Poker Popularity

For those casual viewers of TV poker on shows such as Celebrity Poker Showdown, the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour, the popularity of professional poker player may seem like some artificially created spotlight, done for the sake of pumping up ratings and inflated egos. If any of those viewers happened to be in Northern California recently, perhaps in San Jose, they might have seen that these poker stars have some real clout after all.

At the World Poker Tour’s Shooting Stars event, the biggest poker tournament in Northern CA history, people showed up after hours of driving not to play poker, but to watch poker being played by their favorite pros. Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Scott Fischman and others were signing autographs and having their pictures taken with a bunch of fans before, during and after the five day event, showing that, at least for these dedicated poker fans, these professional poker players are celebrities indeed….

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Poker glossary:

STACKED [DECK] - A deck that has been arranged to give one player a huge advantage. Also: RIGGED.
BIG BOBTAIL - An open-ended 4-card straight flush.
OPEN-HANDED - A category of games characterized by a part of each player's hand being exposed.
CUT - To break the deck into 2 stacks of at least 5 cards each. Usually performed by the player to the dealer's right to insure that the the deck is not stacked.
FORCED BET - In some stud games a player may be required to make a bet to start the action on the first card. This is similar conceptually to blinds and antes, but in this case is dependent on the cards shown rather than player position. Usually the weakest hand is forced to bet.
CARDS SPEAK - Winner(s) of the hand are determined by turning their cards face up, the best hand(s) wins (no declaration).

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