You don't have to know or care about poker to empathize with the victim of the nightmare that occurred live on ESPN last night. Both of these guys put up $1 million to buy into a World Series of Poker tournament, and both of them were holding pocket aces, the strongest possible hand.

A New Zealand man lost his name in a drunken poker bet and was forced to take a much longer, much stupider one. New Zealand law allows up to 100 characters in a name, and the unlucky man's friends used 99 of them.

Gambling is a system of selling hope in exchange for money. Hope springs eternal, but money always runs out. New statistics show just how hopeless your futile dreams of striking it rich really are.

A legendary poker player who once turned $50 into $40 million over a three-year streak was arrested this week for allegedly marking cards at a casino in Lakeside, CA.

Sitting pretty on two pairs against an opponent with a single pair and a prayer, World Series of Poker participant Carter Gill went all in with just the river card left to reveal.

Billionaire Marc Lasry made a number of friends during his time as cofounder and CEO of the hedge fund Avenue Capital Group. In fact, it was his close buddy Bill Clinton who let it slip that Lasry was President Obama's top choice for ambassador to France. A token of Obama's appreciation for helping to raise nearly $1…

You may not have noticed, but former New Mexico Gary Johnson is still running for the Republican presidential nomination! Oh, you didn't know in the first place? He's like this libertarian type guy who doesn't get invited to Republican debates anymore, and is now desperately relying on poker players to carry him to…

Just weeks before Osama Bin Laden's death, the Department of Justice shut down the three largest online poker websites. Coincidence? There are no coincidences on the Internet.

On Friday, the Department of Justice shut down the three largest online poker websites and charged 11 poker bigwigs with bank fraud, illegal gambling and money laundering. The online poker world has been thrown into turmoil, and hardcore players are being forced to go outside and interact with humans.

The world of online poker is strange, shady and more than a little depressing. So what better place to start our national online poker experiment than Washington D.C? Digital Hold'em is coming to D.C.

Comedians Louis CK, Jim Norton, Hannibal Buress, Rick Crom, Nick DiPaolo and Eddie Brill gathered 'round a poker table for Louie's second episode. Are these funnymen friends in real life? How can we get in on their poker game?

Nathan's annual Hot Dog Eating Contest takes place on July 4th. With all the speculation about the contestants, let's get one thing clear: Competitive eating is not a sport. Here are some other activities that should stop pretending they're athletics.

Some of the recent financial crisis was blamed on the reckless culture of gambling on Wall Street. The LA Times reports today that they are now literally hiring people with few qualifications beyond a love of poker.

Panic swept over Berlin's Grand Hyatt today when a group of burglars carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles waltzed into a European Poker Tour tournament and made off with $1.2 million, before a live television broadcast. UPDATED

Being a gambling mogul in the internet age is apparently just as dangerous as it was in the mob-infested Casino age: The 36 year-old founder of an online poker site was murdered in his home in Sweden last week.

Harvey Fierstein, who plays Edna (while wearing a fat suit) in the about-to-close Broadway production of Hairspray, is also known for holding weekly poker games in the theater's basement. The Observer's Spencer Morgan attended recently. Aside from being attacked by a barrage of friendly "faggoty-ass faggot" remarks,…

The Wachowski brothers and James Cameron totally misunderstood the rise of the machines. It's more about cash than world domination.The right computer can already slap around humans at chess, checkers, backgammon, Scrabble, bridge and, yes, Connect Four. Now the bots are taking to poker.