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Positively Fifth Street
This book is a bit of an oddity in the literature of poker, a subject that McManus teaches along with creative writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Most of the books in the field are manuals designed to teach a beginning player how to calculate the odds, bluff at the right time, and size up the rivals. The books may be informative and helpful, but the largely clinical approach does little for the casual reader.
McManus doesn't bother much with the rules of the game because he's out to explore the nexus of lust, competition and desire that gives Las Vegas such a hold on the human undersoul. To ensure that no one mistakes this for a traditional poker book, he opens with a sex-and-drug-saturated rendition of the murder of Ted Binion, one of the owners of the casino that sponsors the poker tournament each year. None of the wealth begat by poker helped Binion after he had the misfortune to marry the one ex-stripper who would later face murder charges for his death.
Despite witnessing the pain and agony visited by the money upon Binion, McManus still can't resist chasing after his share in the tournament. He has four kids to take care of and his wife is home clipping coupons. Sure, he could just write about the tournament and play it safe, but wouldn't it make sense to enter just to get a feel of it? And gosh, if he wins, he could really pay down that mortgage. Bad Jim, as he calls himself, thinks it makes perfect sense and grabs some poker software for practice.
Bad Jim has plenty of other journalistic rationalizations up his sleeve. Some of the book is devoted to his interviews with female poker players, a relatively rarity with the politically correct power to trump any complaint that this is just a thinly veiled excuse to leave the kids at home and play poker. This angle reaches a humorous climax when he finds himself in a showdown against one female and confesses, "no one wants this woman to win the event more than I do, just not this pot."
A queen on the board means that the woman wins, "paying Bad Jim back personally for two hundred years of poker domination by men, plus millions of years of the other kind." Any other card lets Good Jim take home the cash to support his wife and daughters. Who will win, Politically Correct Jim or Old School Jim?
The book is a seemingly endless stream of these confrontations where the action on the tables reflects a tension between our high-toned aspirations and baser human longings. There are plenty of learned allusions to remind us that he does teach writing at a fancy college, but they are mixed into a narrative driven by sex and greed. Has evolution given us a need for competition and battles to the death? Is poker a good substitute now that we're more civilized? Has the poker prep software given nerds and geeks an edge over the "leather-assed Texas road gamblers?"
His seemingly endless good fortune and his ability to string the conflicts into a story with various remain the strength of the book. He just can't seem to lose. And this is a good thing because the jury in the Binion murder trial is taking forever to make up its mind. Something needs to keep the tension building and Bad Jim's good luck delivers.
So he manages to string us along for almost 400 pages until we find out who wins the tournament and whether Binion's wife goes to jail. It's a terrific exploration of power, sex and death boiled into one short visit to Las Vegas. It's even better if you love poker because the endless descriptions of the hands must be a bit hard on those who don't see the fun in sitting around a smoky hall dealing cards. If you do, though, this is a wonderful read.
Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases and Disappearing Cryptography. You can purchase Positively Fifth Street from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This sounds somewhat like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but with strippers..
If you're looking for more proof that good stories happen to those who can tell them
Nope, never been looking for proof of that.
When it's non-technical and hits slashdot.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Let's not take anything away from this review and what could turn out to be an exciting book but why is this on Slashdot?
The only link to technology is the poker software.
What next? Books on knitting?!
I read an article from James McManus in the December 2000 issue of Harper's Magazine about the World Series of Poker. It was absolutely facinating. There are quite a few characters in the high stakes poker world. I haven't read the book, but read this article for a sample of what it's all about.
Random is the New Order.
Between this fine book, the recent publication of Andy Bellin's Poker Nation, a biopic on fallen poker legend Stu Ungar in the can, and the World Poker Tour program now showing on the Travel Channel, popular works on poker have been coming faster than ever.
If there are any regular poker players out there, either in home games or casinos and card rooms, can you comment on whether this has brought a tide of newbies into the game? If so, have these fish provided any sort of windfall for the more experienced players?
The Education of a Poker Player by Herbert O. Yardley is one of the best books I've ever read on poker. Incidentally, H.O. Yardley was one of the first employees/agents of what became the National Security Agency; His specialty was cryptology/cryptanalysis.
So it isn't a rendition of the sex-and-drug-saturated murder, but was written during a sex-and-drug binge by the author?
he had the misfortune to marry the one ex-stripper who would later face murder charges for his death
As opposed to all of the other ex-strippers who were responsible for his death but have been overlooked by prosecuters?
Anybody else a bit confused?
For a city that seems to fascinate the geek crowd so much, there is comparatively little tech here. Mostly it's casinos with their AS400's. All the nerdsmart people here (and I know both of them) are here because they're stuck for one reason or another.
Best Windows Freeware
You'd best consult Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Just watch out for the buzzards...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I've recently been becoming more and more enamored with Poker, I have a feeling I will be losing a significant amounts of money at it soon.
Hopefully I'll eventually get good enough to hold my own.
I enjoy practicing a bit a http://www.pokerroom.com, good site.
-
Read Hacking Las Vegas over at Wired about MIT nerds' exploits in Vegas.
This sounds like a very interesting book and I'm definitely going to pick it up; but I do have one problem with it. What's with the whole Women Rising Up to Combat Poker Stereotypes angle?
There should be nothing about poker that would cause any kind of limitation to women playing it and winning. I play a weekly chump-change poker game with some friends (where going home $30 richer is an excellent night), and sometimes a wife or girlfriend will play for the night. In my limited experience their play is just as mediocre as the men I play poker with.
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Although McManus spends a bit less time than the others explaining how a poker player thinks, his glossary is actually better so you can follow along with phrases like "I got sucked out by the case nine on the river".
- adam
P.S. If you are instead a fan of the "gamble with your writing advance in Vegas" genre, 24/7 by Andres Martinez is pretty good.
I think this book came out of a Harper's article.
Imagine if Neal Stephenson played poker. It's like that--but the tournament actually happened. My favorite part is where McManus ends up playing at the same table with the author of the poker book Mcmanus studied in order to prepare for the tournament!
Oh! No! It's not a technical manual! There are references to GIRLS IN IT. What ever will we do?
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If you've never read about poker, or don't understand it, you might think that this isn't News for Nerds.
If you have read about poker you'll know that poker is the only game for nerds in Vegas.
the concealed wifi wearable computers hooked up to beowulf clusters of advanced servers so that teams of geeks can use the latest technology to break the bank, live like kings and get close to real awake living girls who don't have court orders against them? What about them, living the dream?!?!
Nice slashvertisement but what does this book have to do with "news for nerds"?
When they teach you guerilla and stealth marketing tactics at college didn't they tell how to not make it totally obvious?
Sheesh. C- for you!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Poker is the only game in town for a nerd in vegas.
/., in my opinion,(knot theorists might love it) except that not enough people are interested in knot theory as there are in poker.
Just because you don't know that doesn't mean that it's not news for nerds.
Poker is extreamely technical.
I book about knitting would be just as acceptable on
I appreciate any and all additions to the non-technical poker canon as I am a degenerate gambler but I will steal McManus's book as he's telling folks on the interview circuit that he's called or bet huge amounts without revealing the difference between real chips and tournament chips. Telling someone that you once called someone's bluff when they raised you $35,000 (should be T35,000 which is how you denote the difference between tourney chips and real chips) without telling them that the chips did not represent real money is like telling them all your old gunfighting stories without mentioning that everyone was using blanks. McManus is a chump.
'nerds' read books on a plethora of subjects *G*.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Nerds like any book that has strippers in it!
Deeply ingrained in US journalism is the idea of journalistic detachment. It's generally frowned upon when reporters become involved with the subject of their reporting.
It seems to me that entering into the poker tournament you were sent to cover, and then betting increasingly more, becoming increasingly more involved -- this is not a good example of journalistic detachment. McManus' failure in this regard may be one reason that most of his material was published as a book, rather than a series of articles.
In McManus' defense, I should note that US journalism is extra-particular about detachment. Much of the world follows a partisan model, where the journalists admit from the start that they have an agenda, and that they cannot be completely detached from the subject. So they emphasize objectivity instead, arguing that a journalistic work can both inform and present an agenda, as long as it's done objectively.
But does it have lizards ^H^H^H^H^H STRIPPERS in it?!!!
The it that you did is failing, buttpope. Thanks
Subscribers probably got to read this review before anyone else. Sounds worth the $$ to me. Ugh. What a waste.
Maybe this is on slashdot bc poker is one of the competitive mind games that a computer will never win.
... and women should be treated equally; they should be allowed to wear pants instead of a dress that you could look up through the glass ceiling created by the male-dominated poker-playing world conspiracy keeping them down. Burn, burn! BURN!
why run from Vincenzo?
An advanced computer will be able to win because it has a real poker face (shows no emotion), and eventually, a sophisticated computer will be able to read your biological readings (heart-rate, body temperature, eye dilation, etc) and read many people quite well. What advantage does the human have?
Slashdot: News For Male Book-Nerds. Stuff That No Longer Matters.
Although it's about blackjack, not poker, I'd also recommend Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. The subtitle speaks for itself, "The inside story of six MIT students who tooks Vegas for millions." You can't ask for a better story about geeky college students analyzing the mathematics of card counting and beating Vegas at their own game.
Interestingly, the meaning of this sentence can be glorked from context.
"Maybe I'm just too narrow-minded in wanting only nerdy things on a nerdy site."
I think you just have too narrow a definition of 'nerdy'. Nerdy isn't just gadgets... it's anything that relates to an (often excessive) interest in intellectual pursuits.
Poker is a game that relies heavily on understanding complex probability, strategy, and psychology, and it has always had a strong attraction for smart or geeky people who (rightly) see it as one of the rare forums where one can excel based on brains over brawn. All of the geekiest people I know play poker regularly.
It's at least as nerdy as Chess, and I for one enjoyed the review and will probably go look up a book I might have otherwise missed.
Then you're definitely in the wrong place. The Microsoft/RMS/Linux talk is a slim minority of what goes on on Slashdot.
Poker is a fascinating game for nerds of all shapes and sizes. If you don't like it that's fine, but many of us do. I think, in retrospect, that you would have been better served by just not clicking the link than by coming into this tread and whining about how this isn't your kind of news.
Here are the lyrics to Bob Dylan's Positively 4th Street-- the song the title borrowed from.
don't seem to have anything to do with putting together a team of geeks to break the bank, live like kings or get access to real live awake girls. Therefore, I will be respectfully ignoring them while I plot how to live the dream.
If you're interested in that sort of scheme, "The Eudaemonic Pie" is a must-read. It's about a bunch of grad students at UCSC (several of whom end up being big players in the fields of chaos theory/non-linear dynamics) who develop sophisticated models to predict where certain off-kilter roulette weels will stop. As I recall, it involved shoes which allowed one person to tap in certain parameters of a given wheel spin (when it passes a set point); predictions were sent via RF to another shoe computer which somehow told its wearer what quadrant to bet on.
They were making major cash but somehow got caught.
Freaking hilarious.....
There is a war correspondent here in canada who has footage of CNN's cow Amampour telling her crew that the refugees she has as a backdrop were not haggard looking and to get them to stop playing baketball...
How about the British network which took a german journalist to court when he uncovered that a bosnian 'camp' didnt have barbed wires as shown on worldwide tv but that the cameraman had gone inside the barbed wire enclosure (which was used to protect some kind of hydro pole) to film through?
How about a Pulitzer prize winner writing (and furthering his reputation(!) ) about a top 25 most wanted war criminal and his deeds only to find out 2 years later that the name was that of a fictitious folk hero?
Thats the great thing about the US...
unlike totalitarian regimes, poeple there actually believe all the crap you just wrote.
Travel throughout Europe and south america and you will get a sense of this.
Sit at home and watch the Pravda like drivel that is shown on all US networks and you will see a uniformity of thought that is scary.
But hey, one mans terrorist is anothers hero and one persons liberation is anothers occupation.
You are wise beyond your years.
Poker is a game that relies heavily on understanding complex probability, strategy, and psychology [...] as one of the rare forums where one can excel based on brains over brawn.
Brains will only get a player so far: he still has no control over the cards that he is dealt. The player will not succeed purely on intellectual prowess if he is dealt crap hands.
All of the geekiest people I know play poker regularly.
You and your friends are not a statistically significant sample, especially when you are trying to paint smart/geeky people with a broad brush. None of the geeky people I know play poker; there, I just refuted your assertion.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
- adam
Yardley also wrote a great crypto book, banned by its very own act of congress, called _The American Black Chamber_ but some say he's a better storyteller than historian. I want to find a copy of his poker book.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
"That was headquarters. They want me to go to Las Vegas at once, and make contact with a Portuguese photographer named Lacerda. He'll have the Details. All I have to do is check into my suite and he'll seek me out."
"God Hell! I think I see the pattern. This one sounds like real trouble You're going to need plenty of legal advice before this is over. And my first advice is that you should rent a very fast car with no top and get the hell out of LA for at least forty-eight hours. This blows my weekend, because naturally as your attorney I'll have to go with you - and we'll have to arm ourselves, to the teeth."
"Why not? If a thing like this is worth doing at all, it's worth doing right."
Someone hates these cans.
Quite amazed noone mentioned this gem. A set of simple poker lessons and practices with the most fantastic collection of anecdotes from life on the streets to life as a spy and code breaker in WW2.
Not so useful for the hold'em crowd, but a damned good yarn.
....I am not sure on what grounds are u basing ur arguements upon,but it is certainly shaky!
Detachment,my foot!Look at the coverage of the war in US media. If you really want detatched,objective journalism,take a look at Bremner,Bird,Fortune or America's finest news source
I don't see your point, Eurotrash. Only one of your examples involves an American journalist. More noise to drown out the few insightful thoughts on Slashdot- and some moron modded you up.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
- adam
I might point out that the Constitution of the United States values a human's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness above ALL ELSE -- yet our judicial system clearly, through its actions, clearly does not. Peoples' constitutional rights are violated day in and day out, moreso than ever before because of the terrorism "threat."
Does this mean the Constitution is invalid? Of course not -- it just means we don't respect our own constitution. Similarly, just because American journalism doesn't respect its own ideals, doesn't mean those ideals are invalid.
Please stop trying to further your bizarre political agenda inside a discussion about Las Vegas, ex-strippers and competition poker. It so happens that I largely agree with your bizarre political agenda, but this isn't the place for it.
- adam
Look for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Constitution. You won't find it. That's from the Declaration of Independence, which was an actual revolutionary document. In fact, look for human rights or civil rights in the original body of the Constitution, and you won't find it. That's all in the Bill of Rights and later amendments. The Constitution is simply a detailed and mundane plan for how to form a practical government.
Interestingly, our first attempt at forming a government, the Articles of Confederation, *was* a revolutionary document like the Declaration of Independence - it tried to overtly express ideas about human rights and philosophical notions of government. But it was a disaster, and so the Constitution was written more as a nuts-and-bolts approach of how to actually formulate a government.
But you're right, this discussion has no place in the context of poker. I teach US history to college freshmen; I'd rather talk about poker. What about "Card Counting for Meatheads?" A classic book on card counting.
I for one enjoyed Rounders, though I hate Ben Affleck, as it emphasises the huge difference between casual poker players, who think the game's about luck, and professionals, who know how to read other players' hands, calculate odds, keep track of cards, and bet such that they gain more than they lose, at least when they can bring social engineering into play.
It also points out however that even the greatest player can occasionally be beaten by dumb luck. Smart movie.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
Boy, the more I stick my head out in defense of my previous statements, the more I embarrass myself with my own shallow knowledge of the nation's government and institutions.
I guess I'll take a lesson from poker and cut my losses. If I could walk away I'd do that too, but I don't want to miss the afternoon's crop of headlines!
The parent poster is Canadian, not European. Let me spell this out for you -- Canada is the large country to the north of you where people are generally well-educated, well-informed, friendly and not prone to swallowing propaganda.
BTW, Eurotrash is generally used to refer to trust-fund kiddies in NYC who spend their days partying, not all Europeans. If you must denigrate us, at least choose an insult that isn't already taken.
your hatred of ben affleck does not neccesarily reflect on your like of a Matt Dammon movie (which atleast had a credible portrayal of a mechanic in it).
The proper response is "I was trying to improve my kicker."
Blackjack is the real game of number savvy nerds. I read an article in Wired that dealt with a group from MIT that played blackjack, counting cards and making great money by playing as a group. It was a fun story that made me wish I could could think of something like that. You can find it online at Hacking Las Vegas
Right on. They're so similar that I get them confused. Matt Damon does at least have a grain of talent though, whereas Ben Affleck does not.
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
A little poker trivia here.
You can draw to an inside straight if the pot odds are good enough.
Let's say you're playing draw poker. You've got A-K-J-T-3. You're first instinct is to toss the 3 and hope you get a queen back. Normally, that would be a stupid move.
But let's say, for some reason, there was a lot of betting before the deal or the draw, or maybe you're playing no-limit, and there's a lot of money in the pot. Well, if the bet required for you to stay in is $1, and there's more than $11.75 in the pot, then by all means go for it! Because there are 47 unknown cards, and 4 of them are queens, so there's a 4 in 47 chance of you making your straight (47/4 = 11.75). The odds are in your favor, and if you make this bet a bazillion times, you'll come out ahead.
Of course, you also have to take into account the chances of your made straight being beaten. If it gets beat, you were "drawing dead."
This gets more interesting in 7-card stud. If there are 7 people at the table, and they're all in the hand up to the last card (unlikely, unless you're playing with n00bs), then there are 28 cards face-up, 4 for each player (and 14 cards face-down, 2 for each player). If your cards are A-K-J-T (and 2 worthless cards face-down), then there are only 22 unknown cards available for you to catch. If no one has any queens showing, then there is a 4 in 22 chance that you'll make your straight. So if the bet is $1, all you need is $5.50 in the pot to justify going for that queen.
Of course, you could also semi-bluff, which means that you act like you've already made your straight, and if you catch the queen, so much the better.
c-hack.com |
How much for the ape?
... now where's that Dwarf with my pink telephone?
F&LILV has accompanied me on both prior Vegas expeditions and it will be in my bag for number three. Something about sitting at the pool behind the Flamingo, knowing what was happening mere feet away just three decades ago
Oops, noticed a flaw in my math.
If there are 22 unknown cards, then 4 of them make your straight, and 18 of them don't. So if there was a dollar in the pot, and it was a dollar to bet, then if you made the bet 22 times, you'd win $4 and lose $18 (assuming, for the sake of probability, you caught a different card each time). So you'd lose, on average, $12. Bad move.
However, if there was $4.50 in the pot, then you'd, on average, win $18 (4 winning cards * $4.50), and lose $18, so you'd come out even. So all you need is more than $4.50 in the pot to go ahead and bet, not $5.50. The same goes for my earlier example. This is of course why odds are expressed like "4:18" rather than "4 in 22." Less confusion.
Anyways, you get my point that sometimes it makes sense to draw to an inside straight.
c-hack.com |
After 12 years as a coder, I quit my programming job in January, in part so I would have more time to play poker. It doesn't pay as well, but it's a hell of lot more fun, and I don't have to sit in a cubicle all day. I play in home games 3-4 days a week, and once a month I play tournaments in casinos. I use my formerly high-flying stock options to bankroll my trips.
I'm surprised more geeks don't play poker. Computing odds and expected value comes easy to coder types. Once you get past being intimidated by the rules and etiquette, it's a great game.
Another thought: Do you think Bob Dylan is even remotely aware of Linux?
Check out BARGE
Also, browse through r.g.p. if you like, though the spam/noise content is high these days. Unfortunately, due to the garbage on Usenet, a lot of the poker geek stuff that formerly centered around RGP has gone offline to BARGE and BARGE-like events (ATLARGE, FARGO, etc.), informal gatherings at various poker tournaments, private mailing lists, etc.
Another thought: Do you think Bob Dylan is even remotely aware of Linux?
A couple years ago, someone asked Dylan if he used the internet, the response was:
"I'm afraid of the internet. I'm afraid somebody...some pervert's gonna lure me somewhere"
Given this response as well as other anti-technological statements, I doubt that he has any interest in high technology, let alone operating system politics. It is a shame about Chronicles, BTW.