Before this year, my only experience with poker was at basketball camp when I was 12. We played during rest periods with Skittles for chips and about seven different wild cards per hand. Although fun, the game paled by comparison to other leisure pursuits, such as sleeping, and I never gave it much thought after that. Yet during the past year, I have unexpectedly changed my tune. I've joined a weekly card game. I waste hours surfing online poker sites. I try to drop poker phrases like "bad beat" and "the nuts" into casual conversation. When I won $140 at the table in February, I spent weeks regaling everybody I knew with chapter and verse of my victory. Most reacted with raised eyebrows and condescension, but similarly afflicted friends of mine understood, greeting the story with measured awe, as if I were Amarillo Slim.

These days poker--specifically Texas hold 'em, the best version of the venerable game--is enjoying an unexpected renaissance among Americans in general, and twenty-somethings in particular. It is newly ubiquitous on television: The World Series of Poker, a single event which took place last May, is replayed on ESPN with obsessive frequency 10 months after it ended. The World Poker Tour, another set of tournaments located in casinos around the country, got picked up by the Travel Channel last year. In the fall, Bravo introduced its heavily promoted "Celebrity Poker Showdown" program, betting on viewers being riveted by a fifth-street showdown between Timothy Busfield and Coolio. But perhaps anecdotal evidence speaks louder: Three years ago, when I was a sophomore at Cornell University, there wasn't a game to be had. By the time I graduated, I could choose from several different games every night of the week.