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Your J-J looked good until a 5-6-7 turned up on the flop, a 3 walked down fourth street, and a 4 came down the river: did we lose you already? Then it's time you learned to play no-limit Texas Hold 'Em. Everybody else has.

Article Excerpt
If you haven't seen a Texas Hold 'Em tournament on TV lately, it's probably because you haven't actually turned your TV on. On any given night, you can now watch Las Vegas professionals playing Hold 'Em, Hollywood actors playing Hold 'Em, even rock stars playing Hold 'Em--all from the comfort of your own living room. The national obsession with Texas's game has gotten so big, in fact, that World Poker Tour Enterprises, the parent company that produces the televised WPT events, is now listed on Nasdaq (ticker symbol: WPTE). "It's unbelievable," says Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson, a Longworth native and two-time champion of the World Series of Poker. "It's brought poker players up to celebrity status." * Brunson should know. The 71-year-old who cut his teeth playing the Texas poker circuit in the fifties and sixties became one of the game's first big-name players in 1978, when he published Super/System, a breakthrough book that offered amateur players their first sound instruction in no-limit Texas Hold 'Em. Brunson is also partly responsible for Hold 'Em's king-of-all-poker-games status. No one can pinpoint its genesis, but Brunson is intimately familiar with the game's journey from Texas's backroom gambling halls to Nevada's casinos. He and poker raconteur "Amarillo Slim" Preston, San Antonio oilman Crandell Addington, and four other big-time Texas gamblers comprised the entire field of the first professional poker tournament at Reno's Holiday Hotel, in 1969. (The game that decided that event was no-limit Texas Hold 'Em.) The following year, the charismatic gambling impresario Benny Binion, whose long Texas rap sheet perhaps only burnished his reputation in Vegas, moved the tournament to his Binion's Horseshoe casino and called it the World Series of Poker. The success of that event over the years is in large part responsible for Hold 'Em's popularity on television today. * Maybe you've watched a televised Hold 'Em tournament but haven't actually played the game. Or maybe you've heard about a private neighborhood game, or one of the bar- or restaurant-sponsored tournaments held in cities across Texas, and are considering trying your luck. After all, it's called Texas Hold 'Em. What kind of Texan would you be if you didn't learn to play? Here, then, is a crash course on the game as well as some words of wisdom from Brunson and Addington, two master competitors. We couldn't possibly distill all the knowledge and experience required to win in a high-stakes no-limit Hold 'Em tournament in a few pages. But if you're determined to put your rear end in a seat at a local tournament table sometime soon, we can at least improve your chances of keeping it there for a while.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER + MARIA HOEY

The Rules

Texas Hold 'Em is a variation on regular stud poker: The object is to make the best five-card hands. The difference is that you'll...