When you get right down to it, playing poker in a casino isn’t that different from playing at your kitchen table. Same deck of cards. Same objective. You just don’t know your opponents as well, and good old Rover isn’t around to lap up spilled pretzels and beer.

Since 2002, the number of poker rooms in Nevada alone has doubled, and their annual revenues have climbed from $68 million to $168 million. Credit Internet gaming sites, the Travel Channel, and ESPN for the phenomenon. Online poker sites gave aspiring card sharks free access to live action from the comfort of their easy chairs. The Travel Channel and ESPN introduced hole-card cameras, enabling viewers to learn how pros play their hands. “Now there’s an I-can-do-that mentality,” says Kathy Raymond, director of poker operations for the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. “Players believe now that anything is possible.”

Throughout this month in Las Vegas, scores of emboldened home gamers will compete in the 54 contests of the 2008 World Series of Poker. A good part of the action is in a game called Texas hold ’em. Whether or not you venture beyond home to play, consider the advice of veteran poker personality Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston: “Look around the table. If you don’t see a sucker, get up, because you’re the sucker.”

• All in. When players bet the sum of their chips on a single hand, they’re all in — and likely quite anxious.

• Blinds. The first bets in a round of hold ’em, made before cards are dealt to create a stake for the table. Most casinos play a big blind/small blind system where two players ante chips, and the big blind is twice the amount of the small blind.

• Flop, Turn and River. These refer to the five cards turned face up and shared by all players. The first three, drawn together, compose the flop. The fourth is the turn, and the fifth is the river or fifth street.

• Limping in. Matching the bet of another player — rather than raising — to stay in a round.

• Muck. To fold a hand without revealing all your cards.

» $59,784,954
Total prize pool for the 2007 World Series of Poker No-Limit Texas Hold ’em main event. Payouts ranged from $8.25 million for the winner to $20,320 for finisher No. 621.

» $10,000
Player buy-in for the 12-day single-elimination contest. Some pay cash; others earn seats by winning tournaments leading up to the main event.

» 6,358
Number of players in the 2007 main event, the second highest tally in the WSOP’s 38-year history.

» 5
Number of countries represented by the nine players at last year’s final table: Canada, England, Russia, South Africa, and the United States.

Kathy Raymond’s
Table Manners

1

Play in turn.
If a player three seats ahead of you bets, wait to act until the players between you have done so.

2

State your intentions.
If you want to call or raise, say so — and state the amount — rather than just sliding forth your chips.

3

No pot splashing.
Tossing chips onto the poker table is verboten in casinos.

Barnes & Noble’s top sellers on poker strategy.

• Hold ’em Wisdom for All Players (Cardoza). Author Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu, 33, is a regular fixture on television poker broadcasts. He also blogs on FullContactPoker.com.

• Doyle Brunson’s Super System (Cardoza). Brunson has written what is widely regarded as the bible on poker strategy. Known as “Texas Dolly,” Brunson, 75, holds 10 WSOP winner’s bracelets and legendary status among followers of the game.

• Harrington on Hold ’em (Two Plus Two) “Action Dan” Harrington, 63, won the WSOP main event in 1995. His two-volume primer on nontournament hold ’em was just republished in March.