The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, Episode 7: Fibber McGee and Molly

The latest installment of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show podcast is up. It’s there in iTunes and I imagine should appear in other feeders as well if yr subscribed. You can also just click here to listen online, if you’d like.

Episode 7 begins with a an old Irish ballad by Frank Crumit about “Dolan’s Poker Party” which started out pleasantly but ended in chaos. Then comes Tim Peters with a very interesting overview of the history of poker books. Tim goes back to the late nineteenth century and discusses several of the highlights on up to the present, concluding with some thoughts about the future of poker book publishing.

There at the end Tim hits on an issue that came up last week as we contemplated Mason Malmuth’s worries over the forums affecting books sales over at 2+2. Tim invites listeners to email him at pokerbooks at mac dot com with their thoughts on the matter. You can also check out Tim’s website, The Literature of Poker, for his many reviews of poker books and other interesting poker-related items.

I follow Tim’s segment with an excerpt from Herbert O. Yardley’s The Education of a Poker Player (1957). Then, as always, the show ends with a “feature presentation,” an old time radio show presented in its entirety. This time it is a comedy, an episode of Fibber McGee and Molly called “Poker Game.” There are a lot of digressions, but the gist is Fibber wants to get away for a game of poker, but doesn’t want Molly to know about it.

As always, if you happen to listen in, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think either by commenting here, over on the show’s blog (where I list detailed “Show Notes” for each episode), or by sending an email to shamus at hardboiledpoker dot com. And if you haven’t heard any of the previous episodes, you can always go back and listen to them now. Since all of the shows feature stories about poker and/or gambling that aren’t necessarily time-bound, you should be able to pick ’em up anytime.

By the way, I received some very nice comments after the last episode and wanted to thank those who sent those. (Meant to say that on the show this time, but forgot.) Really appreciate those -- this is mostly just for fun, but it is definitely nice to hear it whenever someone else is getting a bit of fun out of it, too.

Enjoy!