Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 | 8:19 a.m.
Nattily dressed in a pinstripe suit and black shirt, Joe Flynn breezed into Brookstone at the Forum Shops at Caesars last week to purchase a Christmas present for his 16-year-old stepson, a tennis player who also loves to play poker.
He grabbed the store's most expensive poker game, a set retailing at $125 that includes professional weight chips, two decks of cards and a dealer button.
"He thinks he's the world's greatest Texas Hold'em Player," Flynn said while standing at the register, pulling $20 bills from his wallet. "His friends, they have a big high school group that plays. He just can't wait for the next two birthdays. He comes out here and he drools."
For Kathy Freeman of Mount Shasta, Calif., it's a 19-year-old nephew away at school.
"He's on a swim team and you'd see them playing poker in between meets," Freeman said while looking at a roll-up magnetic Texas Hold'em game described as "Perfect for the beach, picnics or road trips."
All the kids in college play, and high school."
Finding her nephew the perfect poker gift shouldn't be too difficult. Stores that never carried poker items have stockpiled World Series of Poker game sets, poker chips and poker books. Other stores are upping their usual quality and quantity.
Poker has even edged out the soothing waterfalls and rumbling massagers found in department stores around the holidays. Books, chips and sets are displayed at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores, making it easy for shoppers with poker-heavy Christmas lists.
"It's the thing," said Travis Pugmire, manager of B. Dalton Bookseller at the Galleria at Sunset mall, which is selling poker products for the first time. "It's selling out well. Everybody's buying it. There's no stereotypical player; even kids are playing."
Ante up
At Z Gallerie home furnishing stores, roulette wheels and poker tabletops are displayed center store. The popular game company Excalibur Electronics has a link on its Web site to the official World Series of Poker site. Dillards and JCPenney both sell tabletop sets, chips, electronic poker and card shufflers.
"Even Galyans has poker tables," said Vicki Rousseau, spokeswoman for Sunset at Galleria Mall, in reference to the sporting goods store that caters to kayakers, runners, hunters and team sports.
Rousseau attributes the densely stocked poker items to television shows such as "Celebrity Poker Showdown" on Bravo and "World Series of Poker" on ESPN, which attracted her 12-year-old son to the game.
"He just gets a kick out of it," Rousseau said. 'He plays with his grandparents. He brought it out at Thanksgiving. He's actually pretty good at it.
He's learning strategy."
With a laugh, she added, "I'm convinced he's going to be a professional gambler when he's older."
Right now the family uses no money while playing. Las Vegas resident Melinda R. Greenberg says she also stays away from big bills when she plays poker with her friends.
"I'm a blackjack player," said the 26-year-old Greenberg, store supervisor at Spencer Gifts. "Me and my friends started poker night to save some money. We play with pennies and nickels. I can't speak for everybody, but sometimes we play to hang out and have fun.
"If we don't feel like going out to a movie, we'll play poker."
Spencer carries everything a young player could want: chips, game sets, wooden dealer shuffles, Texas Hold'em baseball hats, lighted Las Vegas signs, "Poker Bitch" T-shirts, Lucky Poker wall clocks and light box replacement cards (illuminated 10, queen, jack, king of spades, and so on).
For the really ambitious there is the Poker Night Accessory Set, which includes ashtrays, shot glasses and a cigar cutter.
"(Players) want to get the casino feel, especially with college kids," Greenberg said. "A lot of them can't legally gamble in a casino. You can even make your house look like a pit.
"We live in Las Vegas. You'd think it was passe. ... Poker's our focus item and for good reason. It's getting past the whole 'sin' level and it's like a family-fun game."
Family fun
Cardinal Games in Long Island City, N.Y., supplies local stores with a lot of poker products, including the popular Professional Texas Hold'em Poker Set, chips and tabletops (items that are geared to ages 10 and up).
Though the 60-year-old business sells licensed games, including trivia games for shows "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City" and "Friends," poker is the hot item, according to Bonnie Canner, spokeswoman for Cardinal Games.
"Right now poker outsells most everything," Canner said.
So confident the trend will last, Cardinal is working on a game for next year called Poker Superstars, which uses popular poker images from hot poker television shows.
For families reluctant to bring gambling into the home, Rumba Games this year released the game Read'em, a poker-based word game for the family. The game received a 2004 Seal of Excellence Award (among a family games category) from Creative Child Magazine.
"It is the fun of poker without gambling," said Jerry Gaskin, spokesman for the Ontario company. "It converts the real hands of poker into a spelling game and it's educational.
"We went ahead with it because the whole world is crazy about poker."
Rumba, which produces the Survivor board game and Urban Myth trivia game, is also working on a game for next year called "Casino in a box," featuring simplified casino games.
"We figure it's got a couple of years left of doing quite well," Gaskin said. "People are committed to it with the World Series of Poker."
And new players are emerging, store managers say.
"A lot of people don't know how to play, but they want to know," said Jim Popp, store manager at Brookstone in the Forum Shops.
Nodding toward the Brookstone Professional Poker set, Popp said, "This is one of our more popular games because they come with the little cheater cards that tell you how to play the game."
Wendy Rock, manager at the Gamblers General Store, an 8,000-square-foot gaming superstore at 800 S. Main St., said there's definitely a clamor in the establishment this season, and it's not just young players.
"Little old ladies who are normally watching the cooking channels are now enamored (with poker)," Rock said.
A big seller at the store, she said, are the Texas Hold'em poker sets and the Texas Hold'em chips that feature images and names of poker hands ("dead man's hand" and "Dolly Parton").
Even large items such as $3,000 casino tables are being purchased for the home.
And why not, Rock said.
"If you got a 3,500-square-foot game room, what better way to fill it than by putting in a 10-player Texas Hold'em table?"
archive
