Poker? I Hardly Know Her.

It’s too late for you to cash in on the more than $180 million dollars in prize money handed out by this year’s World Series of Poker, but for anyone who wants to follow the action online or catch the ESPN coverage starting July 22, here’s a primer on the richest event in “sports”.

The WSOP got its start in 1970 when poker player and casino entrepreneur Benny Binion hosted the event at his Binion’s Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas. For the first decade or so, only a handful of entrants ponied up the $5,000 (soon to rise to $10k) for the Main Event tournament. Winners were a short list of the most talented and storied gamblers of the time – Johnny Moss, “Amarillo Slim” Preston, Doyle Brunson – most of whom just attended the tournament for the juicy cash games that took place after hours.

Although the tournament grew steadily through the ‘80s and ‘90s, it wasn’t until the turn of the century that competitive poker exploded into the American psyche. Online poker sites started running satellite tournaments to the WSOP Main Event. Winners of those tournaments received the $10,000 entry fee and travel money. Then, in 2003, a miracle happened when an amateur poker player and internet qualifier with the unlikely name Chris Moneymaker won the tournament, parlaying a $39 online tournament into $2.5 million dollars and poker history.

What followed was an unprecedented boom at the WSOP. Participation doubled in 2004, when another internet poker hobbyist – “Fossilman” Greg Raymer – took home the Main Event title, then rose dramatically in 2005. By 2006, almost 9,000 people entered the WSOP Main Event, resulting in a prize pool of over $80 million dollars; first place took home $12 million.

2006 was also the year that the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act, which severely hampered online poker sites by prohibiting them from performing transactions with American financial institutions. That difficulty resulted in fewer players having easy access to poker and partially deflated the poker boom.

This year, the WSOP has a slate of 54 events, ranging from a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament to the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. tournament, in which mostly top professionals play a series of five different poker games. Right now, all but the Main Event has been played to completion and, as of July 8, the 6844 entrants in that tournament have been cut in half.

If you want to catch some of the action, ESPN starts broadcasting their distinctly non-live coverage of the WSOP on July 22. This year, however, there’s a catch. In a bid to restart the sputtering poker boom, the final table of the Main Event will be paused for almost three months, allowing ESPN’s coverage to catch up and Harrah’s – the owner of the WSOP – to generate as much media buzz as it can. The nine people who make it to the final table can look forward to a big fifteen minutes of fame, if the mainstream media grabs onto this gimmicky promotion like the WSOP organizers hope. The final table will play out in November and broadcast a few days later. That’s about as live as poker gets.

Many pros see the benefit of adding some more zest to the poker economy thanks to the marketing campaign. When the poker boom began, there was a lot of “dead money” out there thanks to people watching cards on TV and junping into the game with little training or experience. That’s changed.

Still, the delay of the final table has also caused much consternation and complaint among other poker pros, primarily because it puts them at a disadvantage in the tournament. With the huge number of entrants, any pro who manages to make it to the end will likely be facing a bunch of amateurs who happened to get lucky at the right times. With three months to train, however – and plenty of extremely capable pros willing to take a cut of the prize pool to do the training – all those amateurs are likely to be much better poker players come November.

It’s too late to get involved in this year’s WSOP, but you might as well start training for next year. Online poker is not, technically, illegal, so you can load up a poker client and get started. Better yet, just head down to one of the many local poker rooms around the Bay area for some real live action. This year most of the local rooms ran satellites to the WSOP Main Event, so in 10 months you might be ready to take your place among the teeming masses of people willing to pny up $10k for a chance at fame and wealth.

Just remember, to quote former champ Chris Moneymaker, “In the World Series, you’ll have 8,000 people: 200 world-class players, 2,000 real good players and 5,000 complete morons who watch it on TV and think they know what they’re doing.” Which are you?