i don't think anyone has bothered their ass to count all the vowels and consonants in a book after markov did it, so you could well be right - in fact, he was a russian and he analysed a russian poem called eugene onegin, by pushkin, so maybe ...
the importance of a "markov chain" is that with some outcomes that appear to be random there is in fact a history that can be used to predict the next outcome, but that, given the history, only the immediately previous result is needed
take the weather in tel aviv - (another bet coming?) - a study showed that it is dry there (obviously) most of the time - if today is dry, there is a 75% chance that tomorrow is going to be dry too - but - if it is wet - there is a 66% chance that it will be wet tomorrow!
the study showed that over a period of 27 years there was no better prediction method for the next day's weather than by just knowing what that day's weather was!
there are almost bound to be markov chains in poker if we could only spot them - because a player has just won a bluff maybe he is more inclined to bluff the next hand? or not? maybe a player just having lost a big pot is more likely to win the next hand because he plays more aggressively? or because the big pot winner is paying less attention? or, vice versa, he wins again because he and everyone else perceives him as being on a roll? the next result may not be independent of the immediately previous result, but all other previous results may have no relevance at all
post script
during my research for this post i came upon an amusing short story at
http://www.cs.concordia.ca/~faculty/...o/starwar.html that you might care to read for enjoyment