The online sites cater to people who have time and money to burn playing cards on their computers. PokerRoom.com sent a team of 50 players that ranged from a student at the University of Kentucky to a singer/songwriter from Buffalo, N.Y., a massage therapist in Virginia and a film editor in Los Angeles.

With that field stacked against them, even the best pros, who make $4 million to $8 million a year playing tournaments and cash games with side bets, weren’t safe from short runs of bad luck and the strange play of amateurs.

The fans at the World Series — men and women from their 20s to 70s — have been as quiet and respectful as a golf gallery. In this case, though, the silence largely has been due to the difficulty of watching live poker. Think of paint drying, grass growing. The players are tight, guarding their chips early, folding frequently before the flop. Without cameras to show the fans the hole cards, without announcers to explain the strategies, pot sizes and winning hands, it’s hard to understand what’s going on.

The best way to follow the minute-by-minute progress of the players is through the live updates on CardPlayer.com, which has a team of experts dashing between the tables and their laptops, filing short, blog-like reports.

ESPN will start showing its slickly packaged version of the World Series on July 19, two days after the final table commences, and will begin with satellite tournaments until the climax in November. Even though the winner will long be known, the shows will probably still get high ratings as fans tune in to see how the games were won and how the players reacted.

Poker is as steeped in American lore as Wild Bill Hickock, who was shot dead in 1876 while holding aces and eights, but it took the technology of tiny cameras under the tables and the rise of online gambling to bring in millions of passionate fans.

Laura Rauch / AP Actor Tobey Maguire looks up while playing a game of Texas Hold 'em during the World Series of Poker at the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on Friday.

The World Poker Tour’s hole-card cameras and expert coverage on The Travel Channel revolutionized the game; Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo stoked interest among non-gamblers; and ESPN ratcheted up interest in the World Series of Poker, giving the game and the top players a status and audience beyond anyone’s belief.

Dozens of strategy books, from Doyle Brunson’s War and Peace-thick Super System I and II to less weighty tomes, have fed the boom. Narratives like James McManus’ “Positively Fifth Street,” and profile collections such as “Tales from the Tiltboys” and “Aces and Kings” by Michael Kaplan and Brad Reagan have enhanced the legends of the modern poker greats.

Boding well for the future, men and women in their 20s are the biggest part of that audience.

“For years and years, we were ’gamblers’ and we were seedy and shady and people didn’t trust a gambler,” Williamson said. “Five, six years ago, if you asked a professional poker player what he did, he’d probably tell you he was a consultant. Now everyone knows us. We’re entertainers. If people enjoy playing with us and have a good time, they don’t mind as much losing their money.

“I had the sweetest old lady come up to me the other day. She’s probably 70, 75, and she was there with her sister and daughter. She said, ’My sister’s your biggest fan, Robert, and she’s too embarrassed to come over here and ask for your autograph. Could I get you to autograph this hat for her?’ I almost fell over.”

PartyPoker.com, PokerStars.com, PokerRoom.com and FullTiltPoker.com are among the most popular of the more than 300 Web sites that have made the game accessible to the masses to play for money online.

PokerPulse.com, which analyzes the industry, estimates there are more than 1.8 million active real money players online. Most of those are in the United States, Canada, Britain and Scandinavia. The last two World Series main event champions, Raymer and 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker, emerged from PokerStars tournaments.