WHEELING, W.Va. -- Adam, piling up chips at my right elbow, explained that the low-stakes game we were playing on green felt is sometimes derisively called "no fold 'em hold 'em."

And yet I tried to bluff my way through to steal a pot. I should have listened. Adam, who had played in casinos I'd never even heard of, didn't have all those chips in front of him for nothing.

Yesterday was the first day of legalized poker in West Virginia, and we were among hundreds who lined up to help Wheeling Island Racetrack & Gaming Center get started. By noon, two hours after opening, every one of 200 seats in the new poker room on the casino's ground floor was filled, and an electronic board flashed waiting lists for various games at different stakes.

We were among 10 men (there were a few women elsewhere in the room) at the 2-4 Texas hold 'em table. That meant all wagers were at the $2 to $4 level, the cheapest game provided. Some pots grew to $50, but not much more. That may be big money in a weekend game among friends like what I'm accustomed to, but here, where there are professional dealers and cashiers and surveillance cameras and state regulations and the games need never end, it was chump change.

Across the room, serious players like 22-year-old World Series of Poker veteran Michael McNeil of Wheeling were willing to risk hundreds of dollars per hand in no-limit games. Their poker strategy is a tad closer to what turns up ubiquitously on cable television. Those players are quickly calculating odds in their head of various cards turning up and reading other players' faces, voices and gestures for giveaways.

If any of that was going on at our table, it eluded me. Everyone but me seemed to have played poker in a casino before, but no one was trying to make a living at it.

"It's a nice friendly game, to be social with other people," said Nike Cap, who seemed to be losing more than winning but had no trouble maintaining a smile. He much preferred this to his Internet poker competition.

We weren't wearing name tags, as this was no Rotary Club mixer. So other than Adam, the Wexford computer consultant whose name I obtained as he was voluntarily mentoring me on certain rules -- "Don't hold the cards under the table to look at them, they'll think you're cheating" -- everyone to me was Nike Cap or Death Valley Hat or Goatee Guy or Crewcut Man or Beefy Cousins.

Some had driven more than two hours to play poker.

"Hey, it beats driving six to Atlantic City," explained Crewcut Man, a rural West Virginian.

No one except the beer-drinking Ohio cousins knew one another before, but small talk mixing chuckles and grumbles gradually built between hands. One end of the table with no luck started razzing Adam and our dealer, Doug, about Adam's comparative good fortune. Soon after Adam won three hands in succession, Doug, who quit a job as a computer operator in Pittsburgh to work close to his Wheeling home, got up because it was time for a new dealer.

"You leaving, Doug?" said Cousin No. 1. "Praise the Lord!"

There were yuks all around. Doug seemed a good guy. Everyone winning a hand tossed him a $1 tip, in the form of a white chip, to supplement his $5.15 hourly wage.

But the tips from me were few. Everyone starts Texas hold 'em with two cards dealt face down to them. If lucky, they form a high pair or two good cards of the same suit close together. To conserve the company's precious money -- that's right, I was staked to the game -- I folded, folded and kept folding as nothing came my way.

"Sometimes, it takes a lot of discipline," Adam counseled me. Yeah, easy for you to say, Mr. Moneybags.

Poker can be a boring, frustrating game when repeatedly left out of the action, so I set out to test the no-bluff theory when two good down, or "hole," cards finally came my way. I started betting and raising the maximum each chance on the hand, even when the five community cards didn't help me to anything more than an ace high. Players dropped one by one.

"I'm gonna be mad if you don't got nothin'," Crewcut Man said when throwing his cards away. My hands trembled a bit under the table at the prospect of a sizable win to get back to even. But then there was Goatee Guy, quietly calling my final bet. When we showed cards, he had a pair of kings, nothing special but easily enough to beat me.

A couple of smaller wins came my way before I cashed out after two hours, with $27 still left of the original $100. I exchanged pleasant goodbyes with the group.

More people kept lining up for games and someone quickly took my seat, as Wheeling Island seemed happy to have small players and high rollers alike.

A half-hour later, I learned that Cousin No. 2, Blake Lucas, 22, had won a hand with four aces. He had been down to his last three $1 chips. As a bonus, the casino gives $2,500 to anyone making a four-of-a-kind hand of jacks or better. The game came to a halt for minutes for security officials to check camera replays and make sure everything was on the up-and-up before he could be paid.

It was. Nike Cap, Crewcut Man and everyone else congratulated him. That was more potential money of his they could win. as neither he nor anyone else seemed ready to leave.