Last week in this space we began a discussion of the popular California poker clubs, looking in particular at anthropologist David Hayano's efforts to describe and examine the clubs' fascinating subculture in his 1982 book Poker Faces.
For a while only Californians and those making the short trip west from Las Vegas and other Nevada casinos knew about the California rooms and their nonstop games. However by the time Hayano wrote his book the rest of the country had started to become aware of them, too.
One reason for this new, nationwide attention to California poker was the 1974 feature film California Split directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould and George Segal.