With popularity and prize money growing, poker's best come to San Jose for tournament

The cards don't lie -- poker has a hold on America. And this week San Jose is at the center of the poker universe.

With an estimated 60 million poker players in the United States, the game has gone from being a fad to part of the fabric of American culture.

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Top players such as Phil Hellmuth of Palo Alto and Daniel Negreanu have moved out of the shadows and are now identifiable celebrities battling animated cans of Diet Pepsi in TV commercials. Big-box stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Target are selling all kinds of poker paraphernalia, including clay poker chips. And the Drew Barrymore movie ``Lucky You,'' which features some of poker's biggest competitors, can only further stoke the game's popularity when it opens in September.

San Jose has been dealt a hand of pokermania this week as nearly every major player -- along with such celebrities as James Woods, Jennifer Tilly and Shannon Elizabeth -- has pulled up a chair at Bay 101 for the World Poker Tour Shooting Star Tournament. At noon today, 36 card jockeys out of a field of 518 will play for the $1.17 million winner's pot, up from the $360,000 won by Phil Gordon at the same tournament in 2004. The last six will vie for the jackpot at 4 p.m. Friday.

One of the wrinkles of the tournament that began Monday is that $5,000 ``bounties'' are awarded to any player who knocks out one of the poker stars. The Travel Channel's ``World Poker Tour'' will feature a taped version of the final round at 9 p.m. June 7.

Like the Travel Channel, ESPN, Fox Sports Net, Bravo and other cable channels have increased their programming of poker coverage, while NBC, which joined the pack in 2004, is bringing back ``NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship'' for its second six-episode run beginning on April 16.

One of the factors driving the games's popularity are online sites such as PartyPoker.com, ParadisePoker.com and FullTiltPoker.com, which deal in amateur players who might not live near a casino. In some cases, online tournaments have vaulted non-professionals into competitions with stars of the field. In 2003, Chris Moneymaker, an accountant who learned the game by playing almost exclusively on the Internet, won $2.5 million at the World Series of Poker Championship at Binion's casino in Las Vegas.

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``It's the dream of becoming the next superstar'' that is fueling the popularity of poker, says Eric Morris, publisher and co-owner of Bluff, a monthly poker magazine with a circulation of 250,000. ``What's funny is that poker is now popular with the blue-hairs who before were playing bingo, and it has caught on with the kids who were playing Dungeons and Dragons. Poker is bringing in players from everywhere.''

Like many of the poker aficionados who flocked to the Shooting Star tournament Wednesday, Sandra Joe of Sunnyvale was hooked by the game when it caught on two years ago. The fortyish former engineer analyst became such a fan that she began attending events where she befriended the likes of star player Gus Hansen.

``I just love the intensity,'' she says. ``And I guess I have a competitive edge. Plus, it takes an analytical mind to get into the higher-limit games. I guess the game attracts nerds.''

Joe has collected the autographs of 25 players since the San Jose tournament opened Monday.

The World Poker Tour, which has a circuit of 17 tournaments including the Shooting Star, has an average of two amateurs out of the six players who advance to the final table, says WPT spokeswoman Jackie Lapin. As many as four newcomers have appeared in a WPT final round.

Brian Balsbaugh, founder of Poker Royalty, says he couldn't get companies to return his phone calls when he started his own poker marketing agency in 2003. The agent to many of the game's major stars is now unable to field all the requests he receives for appearances and product endorsements.

Through Balsbaugh, Hellmuth, whose outbursts during games has earned him the reputation as the John McEnroe of poker, has his own signature series of sunglasses for Oakley. Daniel Negreanu, another client, will mentor an amateur player in a reality series for SportsNet, Canada's answer to ESPN.

The former agent to such golfers as Casey Martin and Natalie Gulbis, Balsbaugh made the move from clubs to cards after he caught a televised poker tournament in 2003. Since then, poker has caught on with ESPN, which helped further legitimize and popularize the game through broadcasts of ``The World Series of Poker'' (6 and 7 p.m. Tuesdays).

NASCAR and the X-Games took years to achieve critical mass, but poker is increasing in popularity at an even faster rate, Balsbaugh says. Another factor to consider: An estimated 20 million Americans play golf, but about 60 million play the card game.

``Golf has matured, but poker is still growing,'' he says. ``I really believe that the sky is the limit.''

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