HELENA -- Tony Hernandez goes by "Mr. Taco,'' or, more casually, "Taco.'' Taco has been playing poker at Helena's Motherlode Sports Bar & Casino for years, and he owns the place, so to speak.

Tonight, the conversation is easy as Taco and a group of Motherlode regulars pull their black vinyl chairs around the kidney-shaped, green card table.

"We're playing Texas Hold 'Em, guys,'' said dealer Bev "Pudgie'' Finstad, as she adroitly slung cards.

"How do you play that?'' asked one player.

"Very carefully,'' Finstad said with a smirk.

Not too long ago, said Finstad, she and her dealer partner Judy Will had the only poker game in town. Today, she said, fueled by televised shows like the World Series of Poker and televised celebrity poker, new games seem to be popping up all over.

State figures heartily confirm Finstad's hunch. By state law, poker dealers must be licensed every year, and casinos or card room operators have to get a permit for every card table they operate.

From 2004 to 2005, the number of dealer licenses processed by the state's Gambling Control Division nearly doubled, up from 411 processed the first year to 802 processed in the 12 months ending June 30.

In the first five months of fiscal 2006, which began in July, the state has already processed 225 dealer permits. Just five years ago, in 2001, the number of dealer licenses bottomed out at 224. Since then, the number of licenses processed has almost quadrupled.

There's more registered card tables on which to play, too. In 2002, the number of card table permits stood at 187. Last year, the state licensed 359 -- a 92 percent increase in three years. In the first five months of the 2006 fiscal year, the state has already licensed 388 tables, 29 more than were licensed all last year.

Dealers from Missoula to Billings agree the current poker explosion stems from televised gambling, coupled with Internet poker.

Yamileth Mathieu, a Costa Rican immigrant who moved to the U.S. seven years ago and has spent most of that time in Billings, runs the card tables at the Crystal Lounge in downtown Billings.

When she started about three years ago, both Mathieu and the Crystal's owner weren't sure there was enough appetite for poker in Billings to keep the enterprise running. Mathieu had five employees then and ran just one poker table, with the only game starting at 6 p.m.

"Then, we had these big tournaments on TV,'' she said.

Today, the Crystal has three poker tables, with the first game beginning at 10 a.m. and games running until 2 a.m.

Mathieu has tripled her number of employees.

"I never expected that change,'' she said. "The (televised) world championship of poker made a huge difference.''

Kevin Fulbright runs the newly opened card room at Flipper's Casino in Missoula. The card room dealt its first deck on Thursday. Fulbright said he decided to get into the business because there was money to be made and it seemed fun. But he cautioned that the current expansion in live poker in the state could soon reach "saturation point.''

Live poker has lots of appeal, he said.

"It's one of the few things where the average guy can all of a sudden be on ESPN,'' Fulbright said.

"You're not just sitting at a machine by yourself,'' he said. And, unlike machine gamblers, live poker players always know that every round has a winner even if it's not always them.

Jim Dick runs the card tables at Butte's Kingpin Bowling Alley. He's been dealing since the 1970s and put himself through college at The University of Montana by dealing cards.

Today, state law caps the amount of winnings in any one hand of poker at $300. But Dick said he remembers when Butte-Silver Bow authorities quietly looked away and let dealers offer games with no limit, "when you really could bet the ranch,'' Dick said.

He also remembers when most of the players drank a little booze before trying their luck at cards. Today, Dick said, most of his players don't drink at all and seem to play poker for the fun, the challenge and the social interaction. They're not in it to go crazy, he said.

Both Dick, who also deals, and the other players, look out for each other.

"It's no fun for us when you see somebody start losing more money than they can afford and the fun is out of it for them,'' he said.

Dick said he's told players to stop gambling and encourages people to play with "their entertainment money, not their rent money or your car payment.''

Not only has televised gambling exposed people to the allure of poker, but television also prepares people for a real game. Dick said he sees young people who probably haven't played before come in. They know all the rules and all the lingo.

"They really get into it,'' he said. ''They imitate the celebrities and have a lot of fun doing it.''

Addiction experts, however, caution that live poker is not benign and Montana doesn't have the resources to deal with the wave of new addicts that will almost certainly wash out of the latest poker fad.

"It's probably going to start hitting sometime in the next year,'' said Mona Sumner, chief operations officer for Rimrock Foundation in Billings, the state's largest and oldest treatment center.

Montana's gaming industry pays some money to run gambling addiction groups and other services. But gambling addicts need a lot more than that to kick the habit, Sumner said. There's no public money to pay for more intensive treatment and most private insurance companies don't cover gambling treatment, either.

The lucky ones, Sumner said, are people who are hooked on both gambling and some kind of substance. That way, they can get insurance-paid treatment for both their addictions. Much of the time, she said, families end up paying for treatment out-of-pocket or folks skip treatment altogether.

"There's no net of treatment services,'' she said. "There's no door to knock on.''

There generally are two kinds of gambling addicts, said Quinton Hehn, a Missoula counselor who treats gambling addicts. People hooked on machines -- mostly video keno -- do it to escape their lives. Those hooked on live gambling are thrill-seekers.

So far, Hehn mostly treats the machine addicts, although he said that's likely because live poker has been such a small part of Montana's gambling diet for years. Like Sumner, Hehn said he predicts live poker will start spinning off addicts before too long.

"About half the people I see are recovering alcoholics or drug addicts,'' he said. "They'll tell you right off the bat that quitting alcohol is a lot easier than quitting gambling.''

Bob Piccolo, a Helena-area counselor who deals with gambling addicts, said unfortunately, most of his clients are people who are ordered by a judge to get counseling, not people who are trying to control their problem before it lands them in the legal system.

"By the time I'm seeing people, they're to the point that they don't even have credit cards,'' he said. "I'm seeing people who have really had their lives destroyed.''

All of his clients are hooked on gambling machines, mostly keno.

Sumner said any idea that video gambling is more addictive than live poker is baseless. The brain chemistry of any gaming addiction is remarkably similar to that of substance addiction: the brain starts pumping out dopamine.

"That's the pleasure substance that makes people come back for more,'' she said.

Whether you get your dopamine from the thrill of live poker or the trance-like state of video keno doesn't really matter.