Poker to be the best spectator sport around

No one who has ever been there will ever forget it ... the knot in the stomach .. . it's five-draw and you have three aces ... the pulse quickens ... you love this hand so much you raised the bet three times ... the pause ... the pot's up to 30 bucks ... that guy with the toothy grin and that big fat zit on his nose and you never liked him anyway, that guy lays down a full house, fours over threes and you want to rip your eyes out.

So you laugh when people claim poker is not a sport. Play 14 hours a day for six days in a big tournament and it will do to your nerves what a shaky putter does to a golfer.

The guy who can handle six days of that without drool forming on the side of his mouth, yeah, I want that guy working air traffic control.

It will fry your brain. Remembering cards.

Reading the faces. Watching the hands.

Listening to the words. Deciding the bluff.

Embracing caution one second while striking bold the next. Yeah, the man or woman who can do that, I want them in the showroom with me the next time the guy with the toothy grin tries to sell me a new car.

It will place physical demands on the serious participant. Remember David Wells saying he was "half-drunk" when he pitched his perfect game in 1998? Remember Dock Ellis claiming he was on LSD when he threw his no-hitter in 1970? Wells and Ellis wouldn't get past the first table in the World Series of Poker that started Thursday.

Yeah, yon Cassius with that lean and hungry look would have made a great poker player.

Yon Cassius, in fact, if he were alive today, would have been a superstar because he would be at the final table of every major poker tournament. That would mean he would be on ESPN more than Chris Berman. He would be on Bravo more than West Wing. He would be a poker superstar and everyone would know his name because, well, you can't turn on the television today without eavesdropping on a game.

Poker is on television more than Paris Hilton. Soon, the bet is, there will be a Poker Channel. Just recently I saw a profile of Doyle Brunson, the Babe Ruth of Poker.

The New York Times has poker columnists. A University of Minnesota student recently won the College Poker Championship, competing with 25,000 other students from 55 countries for the $41,000 scholarship.

Presented like a sport, is it? By traditional definition, no. It does not require much physical exercise, although the occasional ripping out of eyeballs would seem to fit the definition.

But traditional definitions of sports and those who play them have undergone a radical paradigm shift. Just a few examples: Night baseball at Wrigley Field, 6-foot-8 point guards, black quarterbacks, PSLs, Asian superstars in baseball and basketball and, possibly the most striking change of all, a regular season NFL game to be played in Mexico.

So the new, revised and most pertinent definition of modern sport: That which amuses us. Some participants need much hand-eye coordination to amuse us, others don't.

Sport is entertainment. It is entertainment resulting from emotion, competition, showmanship, tension and, oh yes, the thread that binds all sport: Money. Greg Raymer paid $10,000 to begin play in the World Series of Poker last year and six days later won $5 million. Follow the money, Mark Felt once reportedly said.

Put all that together while we are allowed a peek under every hand and poker is a voyeur's paradise. I can't find the puck during a hockey game but I can tell who's winning this hand. I can't see a face inside that NFL helmet but my television screen fills up with the dude in the cowboy hat smoking that bad cigar. I can't hear one word from a baseball-basketball-football player during competition but I get every grunt in poker.

Poker and cockroaches, I am now convinced, will outlive us all.

By BOB PADECKY

News Added: 09 July, 2005

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