Instead of going with the original plan of writing my debut column on how the Boston Red Sox, not the New York Yankees, are the evil empire, I have decided to wait until after the Yankees beat Boston or Anaheim with a walk off home run in Game 7 of the ALCS. For now, I will talk about a new sport that has been growing in popularity all over the country during the past few years: poker.

Back in high school, my card game of choice was setback. We played setback in study hall, at lunchtime, anytime there was a substitute teacher, and sometimes during classes that really sucked. The teachers got pretty pissed off when we did that, especially my calculus teacher. But while setback is a great game, by the end of my freshman year here at Wesleyan, my card game of choice had become no limit Texas hold-’em poker.

You’ve probably seen the world series of poker tournaments that have been airing on ESPN, and maybe you’ve even seen the celebrity poker tournaments on the Travel Channel and Bravo. I assume the amount of strip poker shown on porn channels has been increasing as well, but I really don’t know because we don’t get those channels here. In fact, we don’t even get ESPN here, despite the fact that they broadcast fifteen minutes away from campus. And on top of all that, we’re a prestigious college with a Division I non-male rugby squad. It’s a true shame that we don’t get the one channel that we all need the most, but at least I can catch glimpses of Sportscenter when I’m waiting for my lunch order at Wes Wings. But I digress.

Poker here at Wesleyan has become more popular than ever before. There are people playing all around campus on any given day, and there are even a few students here who won some big money playing poker online this summer. So clearly, if you don’t play poker, you’re not cool. Texas hold-em poker is an extremely easy game to learn. It involves a lot of luck, but some skill as well. Everyone is dealt two cards face down, then there’s a round of betting. Whoever stays in gets to see the flop, which consists of three community cards. There’s another round of betting, then the turn, the fourth community card, is revealed. This is followed by yet another round of betting, and whoever stays in gets to see the fifth community card, also known as the river. There’s a final round of betting, and the best five-card hand wins the pot. The most entertaining hands are ones where someone goes all in, which means they are betting all of their remaining chips on their current hand. The best two cards a player can be dealt are pocket aces, and the worst cards to be holding are seven and two off suit. But a bad hand can sometimes become a great hand if you stay in long enough to see at least a few of the community cards.

As for me, just a few weeks ago I was down twenty bucks from playing poker, but a few three-person tournaments, along with several well-played games with my roommate helped me get back to being up ten dollars on the year. I also won a five-card draw tournament with some people from my hall, but we used animal crackers as chips. I would have won it much sooner if I didn’t keep eating all of my chips. Like most casual poker players, I assume that by the end of the year, I probably will not have won or lost any significant amount of money. That’s just fine too. Poker is an entertaining sport to play, and there’s always that lucrative chance of winning big. But like my political views, I make sure that I’m not too liberal or too conservative when it comes to playing poker. I’ll bet I could beat the hell out of both Bush and Kerry though. Kerry wouldn’t be able to show many facial expressions because of all those botox injections, but he would keep changing his mind on whether or not he liked his hand, and Bush would have a lot of trouble with the math involved. He may even start to comment about how playing poker is “hard work.” But it’s really not. In fact, it’s probably a leading reason why a lot of work for class doesn’t get done.