Poker a big deal at new club

World Class Poker is the newest establishment cashing in on the red-hot poker craze.

After years of confinement to Vegas casinos, smoke-filled dives and suburban rec rooms, poker seems to be everywhere. If you somehow still can't a find a game, though, there's one waiting at World Class Poker.

Dan Coffman and two partners opened the club at 2954 W. Central a couple of months ago, and already business is brisk.

The games that start at 7 and 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays typically have the club packed, Coffman said, and even on a recent workday afternoon the games starting at 1 and 4 p.m. had cards and chips moving across three tables full of players.

Although he's been an avid player since he was 18, Coffman was hard-pressed to explain why poker has become so conspicuously popular in the past year or so. His best guess was the exposure it has received on television, where he counts at least eight different programs that feature poker being played by everyone from B-list Hollywood celebrities to the professional card sharks of the World Series of Poker.

For the past year and a half, Coffman and his partners also have been providing "poker nights" at other Wichita nightclubs. He noted that the game has a strong commercial appeal to the entertainment business.

"The bars pay us to set up and run the games, just like they'd pay for karaoke," said Coffman, whose club makes its money from the drinks and bar food that players buy during games. "With karaoke, people come and sing and then take out, but with this they stay and play for three hours. Also, it brings in customers they normally wouldn't see."

The game seems to bring all sorts of customers into World Class Poker, and Coffman boasts that they range in age from "the younger crowd" all the way up to a 78-year-old woman he describes as "a darn good player." The club's version of poker is played for free with the possibility of cash prizes for the game's biggest winner, an accommodation to Kansas' laws against gambling, but the players play mainly because of a love of poker for poker's sake.

"They sit around and shoot the bull and have a good time like people used to do playing dominoes," Coffman said.

World Class Poker has two pool tables, a "High Roller" pinball game, a video game and two television sets that are tuned to sports. All were being ignored one recent day in favor of poker. The players gathered at one of the tables seemed to be enjoying both the cards and the camaraderie.

Johnny Downs said, "I figured that I had a choice of bowling or poker for a sport, and I damn sure wasn't going to go bowling." Kortney Shurley said she started playing with family members at a Thanksgiving gathering and enjoyed it enough to start playing in amateur competitions, with enough success so far that she's qualified for an upcoming tournament at the Big Boys Toy Show.

News Added: 18 March, 2005

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