And those players can get a chance to do what is impossible in almost any other sport: Start from nowhere and be able to challenge the best in the game.
"How many people wouldn't love to go one-on-one with Michael Jordan?" said Daniel Negreanu, 30, a top professional who moved from Toronto to Las Vegas in his early 20s to pursue a poker career. "Poker offers people of all sizes and ages the chance to be a superstar."
But that kind of talk alarms those who deal with gambling addition.
"We think the problem is accelerating," said Keith S. Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling. Whyte said the council had a 15 percent increase in the number of calls to its hotline last year, and is expecting similar numbers this year. "It's the glamorization of this on TV and the easy availability online."
Whyte said online poker is especially worrisome because it can be played by minors, is solitary and available all the time, which can invite addictive behavior and devastating losses.
"Virtual money . . . is easier to spend and easier to get away from you," he said.
Whyte would like to see online gambling sites provide for more responsible gaming, such as imposing loss limits on players and prominently displaying addiction hotline numbers.
Some online sites train their staffs to watch for signs of excessive, addictive betting patterns. ESPN has run some public-service ads warning of problem gambling, and Whyte said he has urged "World Poker Tour" to do the same.
A spokesman for Discovery Communications, which owns the Travel Channel, said such ads will be aired next spring during its next championship broadcasts.
Some professionals worry that poker is in danger of media over-saturation. So far, there is no sign of that.
Shabbir Safdar of Cleveland Park keeps an online blog, or Web diary, of his gambling, posting his profits and losses. For the year, he is down more than $700, but he writes that his interest in continuing remains strong.
"I've set aside $300 as a stake to enter $10 tournaments all [this] month," he writes. "My math suggests that this should be enough to protect me from the swings unless I have a statistically improbable bad run."
Ann Marchand of washingtonpost.com contributed to this report.
