I was a poker virgin in Vegas. Poker is big here in the gambling epicenter of the universe. Huge. This is where movie stars play in those popular TV tournaments and casinos throw daily competitions for the public.

And poker rooms, once a staple here, are coming back to casinos along the Strip, where tourists sit elbow-to-elbow with professional players, sipping free cocktails. Fold, sip. Check, sip. Call, sip.

That's the come-on. Poker fans say mere mortals will never shoot hoops with Michael Jordan or tee off with Tiger Woods, but amateurs can play poker with the Tigers of the poker world.

Vegas seemed like the cool place to learn the game, like visiting Hershey, Pa., to learn about candy. Several casinos offer free lessons, and after your tutorial you can scoot over to a table and play for money.

Most people I found are smart enough to come with some working knowledge of the game. It seemed everyone had seen poker on TV. Except me. What little I knew of flushes and full houses I learned from Yahtzee.

But poker is not Yahtzee, baby.

I took two of the daily lessons at the Imperial Palace Hotel & Casino. You just walk up at 11 a.m. and take a seat at the "beginner's table" in front of the giant-screen TV in the poker room.

The Imperial Palace may not be the fanciest casino on the Strip, but it's soooo "Vegas."

In the blackjack pit, "Dealertainers" in heavy wigs and even heavier makeup impersonate old-schoolers like Dolly and Elvis and Cher.

The poker dealers wear black shirts, shiny white ties and white garters around their upper arms, a rare retro look among today's poker dealers.

Vegas casinos began closing their poker rooms in the mid-1990s because there wasn't a lot of money in it for them.

Then suddenly, the public wanted to play poker. For one thing, poker Web sites made it easy to learn. Then the tiny "lipstick" camera mounted along the edge of the table came along, letting us see the players' cards on TV. Finally we could watch and learn how strategies unfold.

Now poker rooms are booming here, with Caesars Palace among those planning to open a poker room next year. The Imperial Palace's room, reopened in May 2004, is rather makeshift, outfitted with made-over roulette tables, which means the dealers have to really stretch their arms to deal the cards.

My fellow students were a sampling of poker mania \u2014 an Italian medical student celebrating her 21st birthday, two middle-age couples from the Midwest, a 20-something dude in a ball cap and an older guy from Omaha in Vegas on business.

"People come to the classes because they watch it on TV," said dealer/teacher Robert Chertok, 34, a burned-out bill collector who came to Vegas to be a dealer last year.

"As far as the game itself, by taking an hour class you can't really get the gist of it. But sitting down and playing an hour..."

Lesson No. 1: Never pick up your cards, which was the first thing I did. Yup, raised them right in front of my face like Grandma trying to read a restaurant menu. Instead, I should have just peeled back the top edges of the cards from the table for a peek.

A good player can read her opponents' body language for so-called "tells," or clues to what they may be holding in their hand. Does their hand shake as they make a bet? Do they rub their head in worry? The pros "sit there and try to play the people," said Chertok, the dealer.

Wayne and Chris Lucas, husband and wife of 30 years from Pittsburgh, come often to Vegas to see the shows, but this was their first time at a poker table.

Hard to believe of Chris, an operating room nurse wearing seersucker and a white sunhat with little red lobsters on it. She said the game "is just confusion, the betting and everything," but then went on to win $45 playing at the for-real game table.

Back for my second class at the Imperial Palace, I sat down with no-less a diverse group as the first. My poker compatriots included a middle-aged woman, a white-haired older guy in a Hard Hat Lounge T-shirt, a pretty red-haired woman from England and a guy named Ben, a newspaper reporter from Oklahoma City.

Our dealer was Suzie Irwin, a tiny woman with spiky dark hair, glasses and a propensity for punctuating sentences with "OK."

"All right," she said, scanning her students, "does anybody not know the ranking of hands in poker? What beats what? Everybody kinda know that?"

"I'm pretty sure I do," said Oklahoma Ben, the only one brave enough to speak.

"That's the most important thing," Irwin said. "If you know what beats what you're ahead of the game. OK. Now we're going to, for the sake of it, say that all of those chips are worth $1, no matter what color they are.

"Now, in Texas Hold 'Em there is a dealer button," she said, holding up a white disc. "I'm going to put it right here for now. This tells me where I start dealing, OK?

"This also tells me where the blinds are. Blinds are like antes. They're forced bets. And only two people have to put them in in Hold 'Em, and they're called the small blind and the big blind.

"So you're going to put in $1," she said, pointing to the person sitting at the spot where she'd placed the dealer button.

"And you're going to put in $2," she said, pointing to the next person. "These are the only two forced bets. Nobody else puts any money in if they don't like their cards."

Usually she would have dealt us each two cards face down. But for teaching's sake she dealt the first hand cards up. I got a 2 of spades and 5 of hearts.

Beginner's yuck.

"OK, now the person next to the big blind starts the action," Irwin said. "So you look at your hand. For her to stay in she would have to match this big blind of $2."

But the woman didn't, and neither did the next or the next. I folded, too.

Finally, three people bet. When the game ended, Irwin put in her own two cents' worth.

"Now, here's the most important part of poker," she said. "When the dealer passes you a pot (your winnings), you probably want to tip the dealer something. That's how we make our money, not on what they pay us. We're like waitresses."

OK, OK, we get it. It's a good idea to tip the dealer. Two or three dollars is a decent tip in a low-limit game. Hadn't I heard this in the first lesson, too? The winner slid two chips toward Irwin. She picked them up, tapped them twice on the table with a "thank you" and slid them into her shirt pocket.

The next couple of games helped us get a feel for the nuances.

Are you supposed to knock on the table to signal a check? asked Oklahoma Ben.

"You can knock the table or just say "check' or "good enough.' A lot of people go like this," Irwin said, raising and waving her pinkie like a little flag. A couple of hands later, I tasted the thrill of victory. It came down to me and the redhead.

Still worried about my serious lack of poker face, I bent my head down so she couldn't read me and pretended to write in my reporter's notebook.

And it worked! She threw her cards down and the pot was mine, mine, MINE! Too bad it wasn't real money.

Graceful winner that I am, I yelled out "Yes!" and swept up that big ol' pile of chips.

And then, I forgot to tip the dealer.