By Steve Wilstein

AP columnist

updated 4:41 p.m. ET July 10, 2005

Steve Wilstein AP columnist • E-mail

LAS VEGAS -

It’s 110 degrees outside, shivery inside, the rows of leather-banked, green felt tables running hot and cold for the shrewdest poker players on the planet in the sporting world’s richest showdown.

All the colorful characters are here — Texas Dolly, the Brat, the Professor, Jesus, the Unabomber, Magician, Devilfish, Fossilman — and a couple thousand online aficionados who aspire to make their names and fortunes. Some are math whizzes, some seem clairvoyant. Most play straight, a few lowlifes still try to cheat, nicking cards with their fingernails.

The World Series of Poker, buzzing with celebrities, fans pressing in behind the ropes, feels a little like the Academy Awards, a little like the Super Bowl. It’s a rambling day-and-night party of 5,619 players that ends with a main event top prize of $7.5 million, a no-limit Texas Hold ’em title worth millions more in endorsements, and a platinum, diamond and ruby bracelet that will impress and intimidate opponents for years.

All nine players at the final table, starting this Friday, will walk away with at least $1 million — the first to bust out making about the same as the men’s and women’s tennis champs at the upcoming U.S. Open. The big winner can brag of a bankroll akin to a season with the New York Yankees.

Five hundred players, nearly the number who played in the 35-year-old tournament as recently as just a few years ago, will get at least $15,000 each.

There’s no cursing, no smoking and no mercy at the tables in a windowless hangar-like room at Harrah’s Rio, curiously just steps away — through a choking haze of cigarette and cigar smoke in the hallway — from hundreds of bubbly preteen and teen dancers in glittery costumes and too much makeup at the Spotlight Dance Cup national championship finals.

That’s hardly the only culture clash in this hotel the size of a small town: The day before the World Series main event, God and gambling were joined in the card room when a nun attended the Poker Hall of Fame inductions of Jack Binion and Crandell Addington and was handed a $1 million check by Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. for a charity that serves the elderly.

Hollywood stars Ben Affleck, James Woods, Tobey Maguire, David Schwimmer, Jennifer Tilly, Mimi Rogers and the many who have played on Celebrity Poker Showdown have given the game a cool cachet. Woods seemed to be everywhere at the World Series, his hair white, his blue suits pressed, his sunglasses always on. He stacked two chairs together to raise himself above the other players and emanated at once high energy and calm.

“I play every single day — private games, casinos, online,” Woods said before starting the tournament. “I read about it. I’m very committed to it. I’m passionate about it. One of the things I like about it is, it’s a challenge to your mind, your soul. You’ve got to be an artist and scientist to play poker well. I’m a little of both.”

Woods said his style reflects his personality.

“I’m a very thoughtful, conscious, analytical person, capable of aggression, but I’m very, very careful about it,” he said. “I don’t want to go to a gunfight with a knife. When I go to a gunfight I want a howitzer. I have a great deal of patience and discipline. Once in a while I’ll play a marginal hand, and if I hit it then I can be a real killer.”

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Asked if his acting skills help him bluff, Woods said: “It’s more how I read other people. I know if they’re telling me the truth. I’m a director, too, so when I watch people I can tell when they’re lying. It’s one of my strengths.”

Texas Hold ’em is a game of skill, judgment, luck and endurance, the days lasting 14 or 15 hours. There are two cards down, a round of bets, the flop of three community cards and more bets, checks or raises. Then there’s fourth street, otherwise known as the turn card, then fifth street or the river card, chances to bet after each one, the best five cards out of all seven taking the pot. The blinds — mandatory bets put in by the two players to the left of the rotating dealer button — go up as the day goes on, raising the stakes and the pressure.

It takes mental acuity, not physical agility to play the game. Portly defending champion Greg Raymer is the best example that fitness isn’t required in a sport where the greatest exertion is flipping cards, stacking chips and lifting drinks. But the long days do take their toll, and more young players are hitting the gym.

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