In poker, like in life, you've got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.

For some, that lesson is learned - and often relearned - in the company of hundreds of others.

Nine members of the Tennessee Poker League recently returned from a trip to Tunica, Miss., where they participated in a daylong World Series of Poker Tournament. The tournament boasted 750 players.

"The World Series of Poker has events all over the United States," said Dan Numan, an avid poker player for the last 40 years. "Tunica is 3 1/2 weeks of tournaments. It's tournament heaven."

In hopes of winning big, each participant paid a $500 buy-in fee and found a seat at one of the many poker tables in the room.

"When you play in a tournament, you have some starting goals," Numan said. "No. 1, you don't want to be the first one knocked out. Then you want to make it to the dinner break and then you want to make it to the final table. Then, it starts all over again."

Reaching those goals is often difficult in such a big tournament, especially when just being in the room can be a little intimidating.

"The first 20 minutes, I took most of my chips and put them to the left side so I wouldn't knock them all over. I was so nervous that I thought I might knock into them," said Doc Jones, a member of the Tennessee Poker League. "But pretty soon it hit me - even though there's all these people in here, I'm only playing against nine other people."

Still, it's not easy to keep nerves in check when the cards are on the table.

When Sherry Jones, Doc's wife, spotted her pair of aces during one hand, she could barely focus on what to do next.

"I was a nervous wreck," Sherry said. "My hands were shaking so much, I couldn't put my chips in."

Sherry, who says she'd play the hand differently if she had it to do all over again, was beat by a man who ended up with a flush.

"Even though I didn't get very far, I enjoyed it. There was a lot of really good poker players in there," Sherry said, reflecting on her brief but "awesome" experience. "It was the most amazing thing being in that room with all those players and all those poker tables. I had a ball."

Both Sherry and Doc say their experience playing in the Tennessee Poker League, which has games going on seven days a week, helped make the World Series of Poker Tournament a lot less overwhelming.

And that is exactly why Numan and his wife, Jan, started the league about two years ago.

"I can walk in any poker room in the world and just walk right in and say, ‘Out of my way, here I am,' " Jan Numan said. "That's the whole point of this. Most of the people we have sent to big tournaments have never been in a big poker room before and they do fine."

Over the past several years both Jan and Dan have done more than fine themselves playing in tournaments all over the country.

"Three years ago in Tunica, she entered all six tournaments, got to the final table in five of them and won three of them," Dan said of his wife's poker success. "We were at three final tables together that year."

Dan won his first tournament in a satellite event where the buy-in was $200. He decided to participate to see how he could do and ended up taking home more than $18,000 in profit.

His wife has won well more than $50,000 through the years by taking home the grand prize in various tournaments, including the Tournament of Champions in Las Vegas.

"I've won a lot playing poker," said Jan, who added that she and her husband absolutely are not gamblers. "The only money we've used to play poker is money we've won playing it - and we're still playing on it today."

While winning big is always a main objective, the game has plenty of other rewards to make it worth playing.

"People think that poker is just for money, but it's not," Jan said. "It's for the thrill of winning, the thrill of outsmarting people. And sometimes, when you bluff the socks off someone you can't help but show them, even though you know you shouldn't. There's an excitement to this game that's just unbelievable."