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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.
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?
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
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.
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.
--- 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.
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.
They'd catch you, just like they catch card counters. People have devised various methods for making it look like they aren't cheating, but the casinos catch on almost every time. For one, there are cameras *everywhere*. There's always someone watching every table, all the time.
;)
The big problem is that even if they don't catch you using the device, people who cheat often get greedy. And it shows in the betting patterns. Casinos *know* what 'normal' betting patterns look like. Anyone getting luckier than usual is immediately placed under suspicion and then is under constant watch until they either leave the casino or they get caught cheating (in which case they'll be leaving the casino anyway -- the hard way
My journal has hot
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.