Going all in: Poker is becoming a big deal in North Dakota

A pediatric nurse who gave up $10,550 worth of poker chips to make it to her night shift. An affable Microsoft executive with a bachelor's in economics who survived a crushing defeat at cards from his 9-year-old nephew.

A 25-year-old veteran of the North Dakota poker scene.

On a recent Monday night, they are scattered among almost 100 men and women huddled around poker tables in the projector-lit concert hall at Playmakers in Fargo. The bar hosts one of more than 20 weekly Dakota Poker League Texas Hold'em tournaments now under way across the state, from Fargo to Dickinson.

In the Texas Hold'em version of poker, each player starts out with two cards. After an initial round of folding and betting, five community cards are dealt in three stages, punctuated by more betting and folding. Players who stay in the game use their hidden cards and the community cards to form the strongest five-card hand.

League players enter for free and when their fellow contestants relieve them of all their chips, they walk away with tournament points. Those points may secure them entry into the finals in May, when one player will win a $10,000 non-transferable seat at this year's World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, plus travel expenses.

The three players mentioned have different reasons for signing up to participate in the 10-week No Limits Texas Hold'em tournament. What they have in common: They don't look like the stereotypical poker player from the days before the game became a nationwide craze.

They can't be mistaken for the shady male playing in dim, cigar-filled backrooms.

The almost 1,500 Dakota Poker League contestants are 10 percent female, and the average age barely exceeds 30. A number of players have advanced degrees and successful professional careers.

As poker is pressing its way deeper into the mainstream, the local poker scene is teeming with diversity. And unlike their mythical ancestor, on a lonesome, rebellious quest for cash and fame, these players have company, and they're enjoying it.

A family affair

Luck moves in mysterious and sometimes exasperating ways.

On the opening night of the Playmakers tournament in late February, 29-year-old Rachael Johnson was solidly headed to the final table. There, surviving players who had not lost their chips to attrition or to an all-in standoff, stare each other down until only one is left.

But about 10:30 p.m., 3? hours after the tournament started, she relinquished a formidable pile of chips and dashed out of the bar. She was working the night shift as a nurse at Fargo MeritCare's pediatric ward, where she tended to a record number of five admissions by 2 a.m.

The following Monday, Johnson had the night off and a baby sitter at home, but 90 minutes into the game she was running desperately low on chips.

The week before, she had scored strategic wins thanks to lucky draws of her two personal cards, such as a pair of kings and fives. On the second night, she landed the relatively useless combination of a four and five three times, and she was on a folding spree. She was playing against a pool of twentysomethings: four baseball caps, one backwards; three smoking cigarettes; five short-sleeved T-shirts.

"She's been really quiet over there," one of the men pointed out as a new hand was dealt. "It's time to play."

"Let's rock and roll," she said with a resigned smile, sliding her last chip into the pile of bets.

Johnson was born and raised in Fargo, and her family played poker since before she could walk. Little more than quarters changed hands. She joined in when she reached the mandatory minimum age of 14.

When she started dating her now-husband, Derek, in high school, he joined in, too. Now, poker is a staple of summer family reunions at the lakes, when siblings flock from Texas, Ohio and Colorado.

Despite her extensive home-schooling in the game, Johnson didn't exude self-assurance during her public debut a year ago at a free tournament at Fargo's Expressway Inn. When she won the first hand, her hands were shaking so hard she had trouble stacking the chips she raked in.

Jane Barnstuble, an experienced Fargo player who recently landed a book deal to write a poker manual titled "For the Girls' Night Out," says female players have been gaining the self-confidence to break onto national and local poker scenes. Until the early 2000s, says Barnstuble, who has a chic blond bob and piercing blue eyes, "It would be me and 80 men," at tournaments hosted by local casinos. The crowd was just a tad more diverse in the half-dozen states, from Mississippi to California, where she plays regularly.

Now, as widely televised, celebrity-studded poker has lost a good deal of its machismo factor, female players are approaching 10 percent. Women make great players, she says - they're intuitive and not tempted by the testosterone-fueled raising duels that have prematurely catapulted many a male player out of a game.

But Barnstuble, who recently finished fourth out of 170 contestants in a major Phoenix tournament, has more than a few female friends who still stick to Internet games, where they play under the shield of gender-neutral guises.

For her part, Johnson says she's not intimidated by her mostly male competition.During the third week, Johnson hasn't been getting the best cards, but her melting pile of chips doesn't bring her down. During the hushed moment when players peek at their cards, lifting the edges and shielding them with their hand, her face is somber, propped quizzically on her hand. Then, she breaks out in a self-deprecating smile.

But the fortysomething man sitting to her right ensnares her into a dispute about how many chips she needs to stake to play her hand. She knows she shouldn't let him get to her, and she shouldn't risk all, not on these cards.

But although she is right, she gives up and goes all in against the player to her left. Sweaty basketball players loom over her on the oversized TV screen behind her as she lets go of her last chips.

Social assets

Rachael Johnson met Bruce Johnson, a 36-year-old manager at Microsoft in Fargo, on the first night of the tournament. Bruce played at the final table with Rachael's husband, and not only was Bruce's wife a MeritCare nurse, too, but Rachael's husband and Bruce's cousin, also a contestant, shared the same first and last names.

But chances are, even without the coincidences, Rachael and Bruce would have met. When players start busting out - poker-speak for losing all their chips and dropping out of the game - tables are left with too few contestants.

By the time organizers start reseating players after the first half-hour, Bruce has already met the original cast at his table and found out a little something about the more gregarious among them.

Most newcomers at other tables slip in anonymously, but Bruce is quick to extend a firm handshake and an introduction to any new arrival. If that same person happens to make off with a good chunk of Bruce's chips, he extends a hand yet again and says, "Good job, man." Two weeks into the tournament, he'd met about 40 people.

That's not including the friends and relatives who joined the tournament with him, headed by cousin Darrick, whose March bachelor party amounted to an extended poker game, interrupted only by stints at a golf course and the bars.

Johnson's recent initiation into Texas Hold'em had been slightly inauspicious. He first played last Thanksgiving Day at a family get-together when his 9-year-old nephew beat all. Then he took part at a charity tournament at Fargo's Space Aliens organized by a Microsoft co-worker, with proceeds going to tsunami relief. Johnson was the first to drop out of the game, for which he was awarded "The Idiot's Guide to Poker."

Johnson is one of those players who cannot fathom the enjoyment people get from playing against faceless online opponents. On poker night, he indulges his curiosity about people. "It's totally outside of work and career, and that makes it really relaxing," he says.

Insider trading

Minutes after Rachael Johnson walks away from the game during the third week, a young man with a thoughtful, wise-beyond-his-years face lugs his chips to her table. His name is Aaron Bekken and, after playing a number of house poker games over the weekend, he's "in the zone" tonight.

He's wearing his signature crisp white shirt, no cap, no sunglasses. At his previoustable, while cards were dealt or after he had folded, he leaned back in his seat, arms crossed behind his head, lurking in the shadow beyond the brightly lit table in wait for the right time to pounce.

"Patience, waiting for the right hand - that's the hardest thing," Bekken likes to say.

But at his new table, he turned his seat backward, leaned forward with elbows propped on the back of the chair, stacked his chips in four neat columns and won the very first pot. A young man across the table moved his sunglasses down to his nose from the visor of his cap.

Bekken, who bartends at a Fargo restaurant while he ponders going to college in Seattle, learned to play Texas Hold'em before the popularity of the game caught up with the area. He moved to Fargo from his native New Rockford, N.D., after graduating from high school six years ago. His neighbor introduced him to a group that played poker for small stakes.

Shortly after turning 21, Bekken entered a $50 buy-in tournament at Dakota Magic Casino near Hankinson, N.D. He had played for a few years and was confident of his grasp of the game. But he had been playing with the same 10 people, and now he faced 10 inscrutable strangers.

"Some guy's reading you like a sucker, and you think he's the sucker," he recalls.

He was the third player to bust out about a half-hour into the game. He didn't go to a casino for six months after that. He did some reading on poker, and he did some thinking.

"I love the psychology of the game," Bekken says, "I love the rush of getting that one hand and tricking the other guy into going all the way with you."

Youthful influx

The crowd at Dakota Poker League bars is a showcase of the influx of younger players at casinos, charity tournaments and house games over the past few years.

Barstuble calls them "rounders," after the 1998 Matt Damon movie about a hotshot in the New York underground poker world, which heralded the game's looming hipness. To her, they are young men who've seen poker on TV and thought it would be cool to dabble in it. A handful of them are actually good.

But Bekken, who on a recent Monday finished third at Playmakers, is no "rounder." He started playing before poker took over TV, and he's been known to mercilessly clean out his share of rounders at low-stakes games in the area.

Like Barnstuble, who's a bit nostalgic about the days when everybody knew your name at Dakota Magic, he's ambivalent about the influx of fresh blood. He used to play with about 12 regulars, but now, "Any night in Fargo, if you know the right people, you have a game going."

But the more inexperienced players let the luck of the draw - rather than their gauge of odds or human character - guide their play, which makes them no fun to play. "I feel like a dinosaur, and I haven't even been playing that long," Bekken says.

That Monday night at Playmakers, he plays a little too patiently. His pile of chips slowly dwindles as he waits for the right hand. By the time he busts out, all of his poker buddies are gone, so he slips out, wishing he had acted on two hands - pairs of queens and threes.

By Mila Koumpilova

News Added: 04 April, 2005

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