The thing is that people watch, and play, because there's always the chance that some relative beginner can reach the finals, or even win over the pros. That's the luck of cards. How much chance is there that a typical club player goes to an open tournament and ends up defeating Anand or Topalov?

I would tend to agree. Professional poker players as modern heroes? Another sign of imminent collapse of the Western Civilization.

Well, a squillion to one, but that's not the point. *Chess and poker are different games*, and should be treated as such. Hey, at least with poker you can actually win something.

I do think a whole lot of the current popularity of poker is because an average guy (with the amazing last name of Moneymaker) won the World Series over the "legendary" players, inflaming the imaginations of thousands of weekend players.

It was a surprise to learn that Mike Casella had taken up poker too-I remembered him as a chess player, going back to the mid-late 1980s, then twice when we actually played in the late 1990s. He had a good run in the 2009 WSOP Main Event, finishing 127th.

There's another factor which contributed to the explosion, and in my view is more important than Moneymaker's triumph: the introduction of the camera enabling players' hole cards to be viewed. We may draw our own conclusions from the fact that the man who patented it in USA, Henry Orenstein, is now in the Poker Hall of Fame, an honour much less common than being inducted into baseball's HOF. There are plenty of top pros who have been around and not gotten a sniff yet.

I can decipher "Nsky", but that sure sounds like a Grandmaster name!

Thanks.

But I would not be surprised if it is Yermo. I've seen him around in a lot of SoCal tournaments before he moved to So. Dak.

See something that violates our rules? Blow the whistle and inform a moderator.