Chapel Hill's Mike Matsinger likes to play poker with his son, Michael.
"We played 13 hands," Mike said. "And my son won 12 of them. He's played in four on-line tournaments and won two."
Poker whiz Michael is 4.
"Poker has come out of the basement," says daddy Mike.
Has it ever. A deceptively simple game called Texas Hold 'Em has become the next Big Thing. Two years ago, most Las Vegas casinos didn't even offer poker because there was no way to rig the game so the house always won. Now casinos take a cut of each pot, and poker is exploding across the country.
In Durham, a businessman has filed suit to get poker declared a game of skill rather than luck, which could make it legal to operate the state's first poker parlor. The Cherokee-owned casino in the mountains is looking to put in 24 poker tables next year. Poker is on television almost every night.
Pat Diamond, manager at Raleigh's Ri Ra Irish pub, is a busy man on the Monday night before Thanksgiving. It's time for the weekly Texas Hold 'Em tournament, and things are hectic on what was once the bar's slowest night of the week.
"We've got 80 people signed up for a 7 o'clock tournament and 70 for 10 o'clock," he says, scanning the makeshift poker tables crammed into every nook and cranny. "That's at least twice what we expected."
Technically, there's no gambling in the poker tournaments taking the Triangle by storm. Players neither bet nor win real money. They play with chips for points and prestige only, sort of like playing backyard marbles for funsies. That keeps it legal.
"It's the challenge," says player Steve Ransom, who last week was points leader in both the local and national standings. "I just like the competition."
Matsinger, owner of a software company, is making a business out of tournament poker. For a fee, local taverns can put on games as part of his "World Tavern Poker Tournament." Bars in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham and Wilmington have signed on, as have clubs in New Jersey and Kentucky.
Tournament poker is a different world from the musty basements and cluttered garages where guys have long gathered for their tribal rituals. Two of three finalists at Ri Ra on Monday night were women, as was the eventual winner.
That's part of poker's allure. I could practice a jump shot for 10 years and never be good enough to compete against a high school point guard. But as long as I have a chip, a chair, a little skill and some luck, I've got a shot at winning. In 2003, a rank amateur beat the best professional poker players in the world and took home the $2.5 million championship at the World Series of Poker.
Who knows how long the poker fad will last. Twenty years ago, you couldn't walk into a North Raleigh bar without somebody shoving a backgammon board in your face. Then came Trivial Pursuit as a way to pack the house on slow nights. Now its poker. So this, too, shall pass.
Meanwhile, I wouldn't want to be the judge who has to decide whether poker in North Carolina is a game of luck or skill. Anyone who plays it already knows the true answer.
When you win, it's skill.
When you lose, it's luck.
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