Las Vegas -- It's hari kerja sore di kamar poker di Bellagio Hotel & Casino, dan sesuatu aneh berlangsung: It's penuh sesak.

Ke-30 meja yang terjepit ke dalam pojok jauh kasino diisi, kebanyakan dengan laki-laki muda dan separuh baya membunyikan sumbing dan mengocok kartu, sebagai garis orang yang menunggu untuk memberi sokongan pada ke atas menumpahkan pintu.

"Permainan sudah dihidupkan lagi," kata Bill Thompson, seorang profesor ilmu ketatanegaraan di Universitas Nevada-Las Vegas dan pengarang penjudian encyclopedia. "Sampai yang terakhir empat atau lima tahun, (poker) mempunyai agak tua man's binatang buruan selama malam-malam Jumat."

Tetapi makasih sampai turnamen yang ditayangkan dan segenggam pemain kartu tokoh terkemuka meminjami gemerlap sampai permainan, poker sudah marah sekali ke dalam kebudayaan populer -- memaksa kasino Vegas untuk ikut-ikutan.

Kaisar Istana diharapkan mengumumkan rencana untuk membuka kamar poker pertamanya pada lebih dari sedasawarsa. MGM Grand akan buka lagi kamar pokernya -- tutup bertahun-tahun -- pada Maret terlambat. Bally's membuka selubung pada meja poker baru musim panas ini, dan tambah Fatamorgana tujuh lagi meja ke ke-24 itu mempunyai. Beberapa kasino lain di atas Carik sedang mempertimbangkan memperluas pelaksanaan poker mereka atau membuat yang baru.

"You can't find a casino in Vegas that isn't scrambling to open up a poker room in order to get people in it," said Steven Lipscomb, creator of the televised World Poker Tour and president of WPT Enterprises.

Most players deal in Texas hold 'em, seven-card stud or Omaha, with bets starting at a few dollars and reaching thousands of dollars.

To make money off poker, a game where the players are competing against one another, the casinos skim a percentage of a table's winnings, charge a fee per hand or, in higher-stakes games, charge for the time a table is used.

And it's a safe bet that some poker players will wander into the craps and blackjack pits -- pouring easy money into casino coffers -- when they're not holding out for the next flush.

"It's such a popular game right now; it's driving a lot of patrons into these properties," said Dennis Neilander, chairman of the Nevada gaming control board.

As the game favored by cowboys and World War II soldiers faded in popularity, many casinos folded their poker rooms in the 1990s, replacing them with more lucrative slot machines, Thompson said.

But the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker --where regular-guy amateurs have taken home championship millions -- and Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown" have hooked a new, younger viewing audience on the classic card game. The WPT's "Battle of Champions," which aired on NBC in February, drew an estimated 10 million viewers.

"It just exploded," said Jack McClelland, poker tournament director at the Bellagio and a 28-year industry veteran. Lipscomb described the game's renaissance as a "social phenomenon."