What the ascent of poker says about men

Familiarity breeds contempt, but only if you overdo it. Enough familiarity breeds intrigue.

Take snakes. You might recoil at them unless you've had a pet snake. Then you'll watch some slithering viper and squeak "Look at the precious angel!" while your friends silently decide your meds need upping. But they don't know snakes. You do. You have familiarity.

Before I started dropping in on a regular game, I didn't get why poker was enjoying the biggest comeback since John Travolta. And I still find it funny that, although visionaries of bygone days foresaw amusements for us like jet packs, hover cars and robot servants, the hottest toy in our high-speed world is a deck of cards. But having played, having some familiarity, I totally get it. Poker's popularity marks the maturing of men's culture.

It's a guy's game

For eons, men were expected to be strong and silent. Then the '70s arrived, and suddenly men were expected to be soft and chatty, to cry and talk about their feelings. Around the early '90s it seems like a boomerang effect began, not demanding a return to the olden days but acknowledging masculinity and applauding it. It started with Iron John, and the first Tim Allen comedy special, and percolated through the new millennia with the explosion in lad mags (Maxim and FHM), and TV shows such as The Man Show. Poker seems like a mature, natural outgrowth of all this. It is a guy's game.

Yes, there are women who play, enjoy and are good at poker, women such as myself and Mena Suvari (whom I saw on the World Poker Tour Hollywood Home Game on the Travel Channel; like peas in a pod, Mena and I. . . a really big pod with many miles and social castes between us) but the game itself, whoever the players, has more qualities that typically fall to the male side of the behavioral spectrum. Just like dogs are boys (affable, fun, tongues always hanging out) and cats are girls (soft, affectionate, may scratch your face off), poker is male. Even in Spanish, a language in which nouns have genders, poker is a boy.

Take its silence, for example. Poker is all about not communicating, which men are great at. The term "poker face" means the emotional camouflage men come by naturally that drives women up a tree. In poker, it wins them money and is not an "issue" to be laid at the Solomonic feet of Dr. Phil.

Which brings us to that language barrier. Because poker has its own lingo, it's perfect for that bonding thing that guys do with sports, music, movies or whatever subject it is that they're geeks for. Men bond through things such as baseball, Star Wars and -- and this is a real example someone gave me -- the debate over what exactly constitutes a "B" side, specifically the "B" side of Men Without Hats recordings. They enjoy camaraderie, even deep, binding, lifelong friendships, without ever saying anything in English that might lead to talking. In poker, if someone says "Seven card stud, follow the Queen, little Chicago," no one is going to say, "Oh, I know what you mean, listen to what happened to me. . ." There aren't tons of conversational access roads in this game. It stays away from the personal.

A natural progression

Case in point: I was in a game recently where one player, a guy who had folded, looked at my cards and said, "Well, you've got a natural pair and that's not going anywhere." A priceless double entendre, but no one seemed to notice it. It was either discreetly ignored or the focus on the game was so total that a loaded remark like that didn't raise one out of eight eyebrows.

Poker is also all about planning a strategy, which women excel at but have the sense not to want to do recreationally. We also bet on different things. Like many of my girlfriends I'll bet my heart so recklessly I probably fit the profile of a problem gambler, but I don't see the fun in betting my money. I like getting things, not losing them.

Some fads are inexplicable. Potbellied pigs, dancing plastic flowers, goatees . . . all fine, but I can't find any sociological explanation for any of them. Poker, though, makes sense. It's a natural progression for a male culture that enjoyed a healthy, aggressive youth and is reaching an affable middle-age. Unlike a lot of other fads, it's a classic with a unique place in the leisure landscape. And one-of-a-kind is inevitably a very good hand.