"Tilt" tries to restore some of the old-fashioned romance of gambling, a louche veneer that has been stripped off as television cameras invade the back rooms.
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That helps explain why "Celebrity Poker" has a strong following: even the suavest movie star can look foolish when bluffing against an inside straight. Players are judged not just on how well they play but also on how gracefully they lose - and the camera captures every tic and tell.
People talk to each other at the card table, and few other games so quickly expose the personality quirks of the players. At a time of deficit spending and talk of the privatization of Social Security, risk has never seemed safer, particularly when television keeps harping on the possibility of a spectacular payoff.Ĭasino gambling fits our contradictions: we are risk-averse lovers of danger (horror movies, Space Mountain, Outward Bound), a workaholic nation that exalts leisure and a deeply religious country that lets Mammon into the pews.Īnd in a reality show culture, we are poker voyeurs: armchair gamblers.Īnd unlike so many cable shows that cater to the elusive male viewer (bass fishing, Nascar-racing and soon, no doubt, tobacco-spitting), poker is gender-blind entertainment. It's becoming a common personal finance strategy: biographies and how-to books about poker and gambling are piled up in bookstores the way investment guides like "The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide: How We Beat the Stock Market - and How You Can, Too," were in the late 1990's. The lure of gambling is highest when the economy is so uncertain that people would rather spend than save. (Chance was considered the province of the Divine.) Even though more Americans are likely to die of clogged arteries in a day than of terrorist attacks in a decade, the world since Sept. Gambling has always been popular, despite the Puritans' ban on it or perhaps because of the ban. "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is a happy-talk ad slogan along the lines of GE's "We bring good things to life" - strictly for amateurs.Īnd we have become a nation of poker professionals. The more the gaming industry tries to gild and mainstream its vices, the more connoisseurs veer toward the margins. Two of its creators are David Levien and Brian Koppelman, the team that wrote "Rounders," a 1998 movie about lowlife gamblers starring Matt Damon, and they have a great flair for the seamy, glitter-free underside of Las Vegas.Īnd that alone is appealing. "Tilt" takes great pride in burrowing past the gaudy touristy slot machines and holiday theme buffets to bleak, gritty back-room poker games where players wear do-rags and pull handguns when the cards go wrong.
The atmospherics are more compelling than the plot. The trio has a mysterious older backer who has a grudge against Everest Everest is in league with a smooth-talking casino operator. The three rookies are a kino card version of "Mod Squad": Miami, a beautiful blonde (Kristin Lehman) Eddie, a moody hunk (Eddie Cibrian) and Clark, a cool black man (Todd Williams III). "The Matador" rules Las Vegas, not just by skill but also by cheating. He is played by Michael Madsen, whose granite face and smoky voice are familiar from "Kill Bill Vol. "Tilt" follows three young cardsharps who team up to take down the reigning king of poker, Don Everest, a mean, cool and corrupt card champion known as the Matador. Networks cannot idealize gamblers in prime time any more than they could broadcast "The Sopranos," but cable has no such inhibitions.
"Tilt," which begins tonight, is a cable version of "Las Vegas." But unlike the righteous security experts and floor supervisors who are the stars of the NBC drama, grifters and high rollers are the heroes of ESPN's drama.
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So it stands to reason that ESPN, the sports cable network that covers the World Series of Poker with a hushed reverence once reserved for Wimbledon, would develop a drama about cardplayers. (A&E's "Caesar's 24/7" began this week, picking up where Fox's reality show "Casino" left off.) Celebrity poker, championship poker and casino-based reality shows abound on cable and broadcast networks. "Las Vegas," the NBC drama about a Nevada casino, is just the prime-time tip of the iceberg. Gambling, and especially poker, has invaded almost every form of television. God does not play dice with the universe, but Universal Studios is playing God with the dice.
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