Each year we hold the tournament round about this time of year, because it was round about this time of year, back in the early eighties, that Sad Henry found himself playing poker with Telly Savalas at The Bicycle, a notorious card club in Los Angeles.

It is the closest any of us down at the Chalk 'n Cue have ever come to greatness, even counting that time in Amsterdam when I thought I recognised William Shatner in a small bar on the Kaizersgracht. Sad Henry still trembles when he remembers betting the pot and drawing to the outside straight in a head-to-head with Kojak. Telly Savalas, Sad Henry claims, lowered his lilac-tinted sun-glasses, looked him in the eye and said: "Who loves ya, baby?"

So each year we have the tournament, but each year the start is delayed while people argue about nicknames. No matter how many times I remind them, those chuckleheads just can't remember to call me The Duke. "No!" I yell. "For the last time: I am The Duke, not The Dude!" Big Bob Plummer sometimes tries to call me The Dupe, but that is because Big Bob Plummer does not have an advanced sense of humour.

And just when we finally manage to arrange everything to the satisfaction of all parties, Porky Withers always pipes up: "Why can't I have a nickname too?" At which point a variety of suggested nicknames are aired, generally polysyllabic and involving body parts or blood relatives, and Porky Withers sensibly concludes that he is better off as he is.

Our stakes are moderate - enough to hurt, but not so high as to cause nosebleeds or fainting spells - so I was looking forward to watching The Million Dollar Deal (DSTV; Reality Channel; Friday; 4.40pm), a documentary about the annual World Poker Championships in Las Vegas.

Each year several hundred hopefuls pay $10 000 each to join the tournament. They play until they lose their money, and the winner takes a million dollars. You have to be good with cards and even better with a nickname: "The Devilfish", "Amarillo Slim", "The Sandbag"... dreamily I imagined The Dude taking his place among them. No, no, not The Dude, I mean The Duke. Damn you guys.

It is difficult to capture the world of poker on television. In the glitter and jangle of the Vegas casinos, where the very walls and ceilings take a thousand people and a million lights and multiply them in a zillion tiny, shiny surfaces, it is easy for the camera to lose the players in the dazzle. In the vertiginous bee-eye giddiness of seeing their own reduced, chopped-up, mass-replicated image staring back at them, it is even easier for players to lose themselves.

Matt Damon, foolishly trying to reprise his role in Rounders with real money, was one of the first to lose. From what I saw, Matt Damon is the worst poker player since Porky Withers. "It's harder in real life," he dolefully announced, patting the pocket where $10 000 used to be, remembering too late that real life seldom has a script.

The show tried to convey the unimaginable lives of men who stretch their future and that of their family upon a silent calculation, the flip of a card, the courage of a gamble.

It is a way of life that turns upon a cold and pitiless philosophy, and it is inconceivably lonely. We watched as Mike McGee lost $92 000 on a single hand, playing blamelessly but falling to the kind of outrageous fortune that only happens in Steve McQueen or Matt Damon movies. He stood up from the table and walked slowly to the exit, head steady but with heels of lead. His wife touched his arm as he passed, but you have never seen a man so alone in an indifferent universe.

"Poker is like life," said Mike McGee the next day, and his voice echoed like an empty bank balance. But poker is not like life. In poker you cannot win without someone losing. Every cent you make is a cent you have taken from someone else, and that it is a desolate way to make a living.

In the end it hardly mattered who won, except, I suppose, to the man who won. It was the money that was the real star, and the players and the cards were simply its conduits, the channels through which it circulated. You sensed that the money would just keep moving, never alighting long. It gave me an empty feeling. I felt very pleased that I am not a professional poker player.

All the same, the Telly Savalas Memorial tournament will be running this month, concurrent with the World Cup. If you have the entry fee, you are welcome to buy in to a seat at the green table. Taking people's money away may be an awful profession, but as recreation you just can't beat it.