Reporting from the 1973 World Series of Poker

Over the weekend I was in the middle of doing some reading for this week’s “Poker & Pop Culture” column for PokerNews when I had an idea for something I’m going to try to do this week on Hard-Boiled Poker.

The idea came as I was rereading Jon Bradshaw’s great gambling narrative Fast Company, published in 1975 (reviewed here), in particular the chapter on Johnny Moss. That chapter contains a detailed report from the 1973 World Series of Poker, including a number of specific hands described with varying levels of detail.

There were 13 players participating in that year’s Main Event at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino. It was the first year players paid $10,000 to play, actually. In 1970, the first WSOP had no tournament, then in 1971 the buy-in for the Main Event was $5,000. Then in 1972 the buy-in was $10K, but Benny Binion paid half of it for each player.

As would be the case through the 1977 WSOP, the Main Event was played “winner-take-all,” meaning the champ earned a $130,000 first prize. There were no bracelets yet, either, just a “corny trophy” (as Becky Behnen, Binion’s daughter, described it years later). The bracelet first was introduced in 1976.

As I was rereading Bradshaw’s entertaining account, I remembered how this particular WSOP Main Event not only was covered much more extensively than previous ones, but many subsequent ones, too.

David Spanier also writes extensively about the tournament in his 1977 book Total Poker in a chapter focusing on Pearson. (I reviewed Total Poker here.) Like Bradshaw’s account, Spanier’s includes a number of hands as well as chip count updates along the way.

There is also a filmed record of the event, made by Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder for the CBS Sports Spectacular anthology show and available on YouTube. During the 47-minute program you can see portions of several hands being played, get updates on counts, and hear still more table talk and other information from the event.

Speaking of media coverage, Benny Binion was interviewed in May 1973 by Mary Ellen Glass shortly after the completion of that year’s WSOP, and Binion tells her how “this poker game here gets us a lot of advertisement, the world series of poker.” He continues: “Last year it was in seven thousand newspapers; I don’t how many it was in this year, whether it was more or less, but we got awful good coverage on it this year.” (You can read the two-part interview here and here.)

The 1972 WSOP was won by Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston, who then went on to help publicize the WSOP (and poker, generally speaking) by appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson multiple times. Preston was also featured on 60 Minutes, spoke before various groups including the National Press Club in D.C., and produced a book titled Play Poker to Win that the some of the other players joke about at that 1973 event.

Some have misread Binion’s “seven thousand newspapers” quote to Glass as saying there were 7,000 articles written about the 1973 WSOP, when obviously he was referring to the 1972 one. In any event, Preston’s publicity tour certainly contributed heavily to the coverage, not only helping boost the number of articles but attracting folks like Bradshaw and Spanier to be there in 1973, as well as encourage CBS to go along with Snyder’s idea to do the special for the Spectacular.

Here’s my idea -- using primarily Bradshaw, Spanier, and the CBS documentary, plus a few random extra bits of info gathered online, I thought I’d compile as best as I could some “live updates” from the 1973 WSOP and share them here on HBP over the next few days.

The tournament itself lasted two days. They started sometime during the late afternoon on Monday, May 14, 1973, probably around 4:30 p.m., and after about nine hours of play (plus a dinner break) the original 13 had played down to six players. Play resumed on Tuesday, May 15, 1973 at around 6 p.m. again, and it was sometime after 2 a.m. that the last hand was dealt.

Coverage begins tomorrow, and may continue for the rest of the week depending on how quickly I can get through it all. Come back then and follow along as Crandall Addington, Bobby Brazil, Doyle Brunson, Jimmy Cassella, Bobby Hoff, Bob Hooks, Sherman Lanier, Johnny Moss, Walter “Puggy” Pearson, Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston, Brian “Sailor” Roberts, Jack Straus, and Roger Van Ausdall do battle to see who becomes the 1973 WSOP Main Event champion.

Image: “Binion’s Horseshoe Casino presents The World Series of Poker,” CBS Sports Spectacular (1973).

Jesse May Interview, April 2011 (Part 1 of 2)

The passing of Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott earlier this week brought to mind his significant role on the first series of Late Night Poker. That in turn reminded me of a lengthy interview I was able to do a while back with Jesse May, another person who was there at the start of the groundbreaking poker TV show in the late 1990s.

This was another of those Betfair Poker interviews that are no longer available online, and I realized now might be as good a time as any for me to repost the interview over here. Took me a while to find the sucker, actually, but thankfully I did.

I’ll repost it here in two parts, just as it originally appeared on Betfair Poker in early April 2011 -- right before Black Friday, actually, which is kind of interesting to consider when reading some of the discussion of the state of poker at that time. The first part primarily focuses on May’s 1998 novel, Shut Up and Deal, while the second (which I’ll post tomorrow) delves into the Late Night Poker story.

Thanks again, Jesse, for the interview!

* * * * * “The Betfair Poker Interview: Jesse May, Part 1”
[Originally published at Betfair Poker, 1 April 2011]

When it comes to poker-themed novels, Jesse May’s Shut Up and Deal (1998) stands out as an especially accomplished entry, a book that brings alive the unique and fascinating world of the cash-game grinder of the mid-1990s.

May’s narrator, a young poker pro named Mickey, relates in episodic fashion the story of his ongoing struggles both at the tables and elsewhere, exploring in detail the many challenges faced by himself and others as they all separately strive to “stay in action.” Full of memorable characters and set pieces, I highly recommend May’s novel as both an entertaining read and an insightful exploration of poker’s many highs and lows.

In addition to his poker writing, May is well known for his contributions as a commentator on numerous poker shows, a role that has earned him the nickname “the Voice of Poker.” For May that career began shortly after the publication of his novel with the first season of Late Night Poker (in 1999), a show that would come to have great influence on televised poker a few years later with the launching of the World Poker Tour and expansion of coverage of the World Series of Poker on ESPN.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with May about both Shut Up and Deal and the early years of Late Night Poker. This week I’ll share the first part of our conversation in which we focused on May’s novel, and next week will present the story of May’s involvement with Late Night Poker.

Short-Stacked Shamus: I know Shut Up and Deal is based somewhat on your own experiences playing poker in the late ’80s-early ’90s. To what extent is Mickey’s story comparable to your own?

Jesse May: First of all, the story is true in the sense that I think truth is stranger than fiction. When I was writing it, I wasn’t worried about it being true, but I think that when it comes to a lot of gambling stories, you find that you could never make this stuff up. That’s been the case, I think, for every moment I’ve been in the gambling world.

Like Mickey, I did start playing when I was in high school. With a couple of other guys we all got obsessed with poker at the same time, then went out to Las Vegas -- four of us, all underage, like 17 or 18 -- and there discovered Texas hold’em (limit). Soon after that it became kind of a more serious thing for me. I used to go to Las Vegas quite a bit back before I turned 21, spending summers there trying to play poker. I dropped out of college twice, and after I turned 21 I ended up in Vegas and really tried to make a go of it.

Obviously it was during that poker explosion, and so as far as the places in the book go, they did kind of coincide with where I was. I spent a lot of time in Las Vegas. I was in Foxwoods within a month after they opened up [in 1992] and stayed there the better part of a year. I was in Atlantic City the very day they opened poker [in 1993], and stayed there about a year-and-a-half. Those were really interesting times as far as poker goes, because it was so new. There was no internet, obviously, back then, and all the action was there. I think the world had never seen anything like those two major openings -- Atlantic City and Foxwoods.

SSS: In a way the novel kind of chronicles this interesting and important moment for poker. For a lot of people who only came into poker post-Moneymaker, they might not realize how significant that earlier “explosion” really was for poker.

JM: That’s true. Also, it was interesting... at the time there were some poker texts, but most people really didn’t have access to them. So it was a combination of there being so few people who played poker -- not even well but just marginally -- and there being so much money around.

It was incredible, because it required such a different skill set to become a poker player then -- a professional -- than it does today. The skill sets then were really about money management and surviving in that hustling type of world rather than sitting around talking about hands. People didn’t sit around and talk strategy then. You talked about who was cheating and who owed you money and that kind of stuff (laughs). And I loved that world, and so for me it was a great time.

SSS: It’s funny, the world your describing was really much more similar to what came before -- even stretching back to the 19th century -- than what the poker world has become over the decade.

JM: It’s true. I look at a guy like Amarillo Slim [Preston]. You know -- throw out all the personal controversies that he’s had -- people have been very critical of his game, saying that he’s essentially not a poker player. And to some extent that’s true, but the fact is that in his time, and even when I would play with him a little bit back in Foxwoods, he was representative of a guy who was a great professional as far as poker went. Because he knew everything else. He knew how to get a game together, how to get an edge... he knew all that stuff. And I always had a lot of respect for him.

It was people like that -- like the Bart Stone character [in Shut Up and Deal] -- who really were able to thrive back then, and who wouldn’t be thriving now. And it really was, as you’re saying, the tail end of that era where that sort of “road gambler” was able to succeed.

SSS: So what led to your decision to write the novel?

JM: The book itself was written as a catharsis, really. Back when I was playing, you got such a strong response from people when they found out you were playing poker. You kind of continually felt yourself defending your lifestyle to others and to yourself and trying to make order of it.

I used to take a lot of breaks when I played poker, and this particular time when I had the first crack at writing the novel, I had been playing in Atlantic City and took off nine months to travel in Asia. It was during that period I wrote the bones of the novel, writing every day.

SSS: So the places and chronology of the novel roughly correspond to your own experiences. The characters -- Bart Stone, John Smiley, Uptown Raoul -- I assume they, too, are somewhat based on people you knew and with whom you played?

JM: Yes. Actually there were some liability issues with the publisher that made it very important for me to go through and change certain things -- ethnicities, physical qualities, names, things like that. But a lot of times [with a given character] there was some person I had in mind, and sometimes characters were compilations of different people.

The Bart Stone character, for example, was probably as close to real as you could get [i.e., the person on whom he was based]. He was such a strong personality, you couldn’t exaggerate him. His life was so amazing... he really was one of the true road gamblers. He was a guy who had a church-going wife and completely lived this sort of “picket fence” existence for three weeks out of every month, then for one week he’d get into his car to some town -- just start driving -- and find a town, find a game, and find a way to get the money.

He had this saying. He said he’d go into a town and first he’d try and beat people on the square. If that didn’t work, he’d try and cheat them. And if that didn’t work, he’d just pull out a gun and rob the motherf*ckers. That was his philosophy of life!

SSS: You actually start the novel with Bart Stone -- with a sketch of his character and telling the story of him cheating others. It’s interesting, because I think by starting the book that way you kind of indirectly introduce Mickey as a contrasting figure -- a “good” guy, that is, who looks at Bart and expresses a kind of awe because he could never live that way. But then he weirdly admires Bart, too. And Mickey, as we come to find out, isn’t without flaws himself.

JM: I guess it’s kind of flattering to hear you say that. You know, I recently just read Vicky Coren’s book. I don’t know if you’ve read that.

SSS: Oh, yes -- For Richer, For Poorer. It’s terrific.

JM: Yes, I quite like it, too. And I think the reason I like it so much is that unlike a lot of these “tell-all” poker books or whatever they are, Vicky never tries to make herself into sort of an elite. She throws herself in with the poker players -- they are her peers, and she’s not trying to pretend that she’s not as bad or as good or as sick or as addicted or anything as any of them. And I always thought that was kind of important in the poker world as far as keeping your own order together was concerned -- that if you do think you’re different or better than everyone else, at least recognize that you’re a hypocrite (laughs)!

One of the things about poker, especially back then, is that you are faced with so many moral choices. I think that’s what excited me about the story more than anything else. Just because of poker’s nature, the decisions that you have to make every day... you are constantly testing out your own morality. And other people’s, too. You find out a lot about what lengths they’ll go to, what depths they’ll sink to, really who they are as a person. Poker reveals so much about people’s personalities because the ethical dilemmas -- the gray areas -- they come so fast and furious.

SSS: There are several themes present in the novel. One seems to be the way people tend to view poker either realistically or they romanticize it -- that there’s a “reality” of poker that some get, and there’s a “romance” about the game that others prefer to see.

JM: I’ll buy that.

SSS: A related theme in the book -- and this is interesting because you’ve already used this phrase a couple of times with regard to the writing of the novel -- is this idea of “making order” of your life. Mickey is constantly trying to do that himself in the book, and struggling, at times, between being “realistic” and being “romantic” about his life as a full-time poker player.

JM: I think that for people who play poker professionally today, that “order” is so much more readily available. And it’s an order that is very similar for all of them. They’ve identified profitable ways to play, mistakes their opponents make, and all of the numbers involved that they can see with the tracking software and things like that -- the order is there. I think it was much harder before, but believe me, they still have a lot of chaos in their lives, because the nature of poker and gambling is obviously based on the streaks of winning and losing. That stuff throws off your sense of balance.

Then there’s the “moral” order of setting up rules for yourself, which obviously is a whole other thing. The order of believing that what you’re doing is the right thing to be doing. To me that’s always been the major theme of gambling -- not just poker -- that you’re always making up new rules for yourself. Maybe it’s like that in life, too, you know, something works for a while and then something throws it off and you have to go back to the drawing board. But it’s very important for people to have a sense of order, and I agree that’s something that Mickey struggles with in the book. As everybody in the poker world does.

I think everyone takes this little, sort of vicarious pleasure in seeing someone who’s completely on top of the poker world run bad. You know, when somebody like Brian Townsend is writing that he’s questioning everything and going back to the drawing board. You recognize that the poker world can be as chaotic for them as it is for the rest of us.

SSS: I think you’re right about it being a different situation today than for players in the ’90s, not just in terms of being able to track results and see “order” that way, but when it comes to the moral questions, too. Poker still isn’t completely accepted today, but -- to go back to what you were saying earlier -- poker pros aren’t necessarily having to defend what they do as much today as before.

Okay, one last question about the novel. What writers -- poker and otherwise -- would you list as ones you admire and might consider as having influenced you when writing Shut Up and Deal?

JM: As far as poker writers are concerned, I love Al Alvarez (The Biggest Game in Town), of course. And Jon Bradshaw, I love the way he profiles people in Fast Company. Also, Damon Runyon, to me, is one of the great writers of all time when it comes to creating the characters of gambling. I feel like he is so underappreciated, although now that I think about it I probably never read any Runyon before I wrote the book. And Mario Puzo’s Fools Die...

SSS: You allude to that one in Shut Up and Deal.

JM: Oh, that’s right. You know Puzo was a big gambler. To me, Fools Die was the greatest book on Vegas that had ever been written. There are a couple of scenes in there in which he describes Vegas that I think heavily influenced me.

For other [non-gambling] stories, I used to read Somerset Maugham quite a bit. I love storytellers who are happy to tell the details they want to tell, you know? Writers like Hemingway or Djuna Barnes... who show that it doesn’t have to be a [linear] sort of narrative where you say “he said” and then “she said” but that you can just relate what strikes you about people. I always felt like that at the poker table, but essentially there you are just watching people, which I love to do.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2, covering the early years of Late Night Poker.

Assigning Bradshaw and McGuire

Among the readings I assign in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class is a chapter from Paul McGuire’s Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker.

The chapter comes from the latter part of the book when Dr. Pauly is at his most cynical regarding the commercial spectacle of the WSOP, the chapter ending with a funny punchline about Phil Hellmuth’s increasingly elaborate entrances to the Main Event up to that point (2008).

Pauly suggests Hellmuth try riding in one year on a donkey. “I can only imagine the snarky headlines,” he writes. “‘Ass Rides Ass to WSOP.’”

I assign the reading alongside another favorite of mine, Jon Bradshaw, writing in Fast Company about a much smaller World Series of Poker happening some 35 years before. I’ve reviewed Bradshaw’s book here before, an excellent example of long form journalism that includes several great essays, including the one about Johnny Moss I have my students read.

Unlike McGuire, Bradshaw is much more admiring of his subjects whom he treats almost as though they are larger than life. Both authors are insightful about the WSOP and poker’s broader relationship to American culture, and the contrast of their perspectives gives the students a lot to consider which makes the discussions especially enjoyable for me.

Some occasionally find Pauly a little snarky. But most are entertained and enjoy the inventiveness of his style. And they respond, too, to his overall point about the commercialization of the game, something which indeed reflects larger trends happening in America not just in poker but in other cultural forums, too.

Anyhow, the discussion this week reminded me of how much I enjoyed Pauly’s book. If you’re interested in the WSOP’s history -- and in particular that 2005-2008 period he covers most closely -- and haven’t read Lost Vegas before, I recommend it.

A lot has changed over the last five years at the WSOP, I think, and, of course, in poker, generally speaking and its place in the U.S. over the same period. And of course it has all changed even more dramatically since the 1970s when Bradshaw wrote about poker and gambling and the WSOP. But many of the observations made in both books still apply, too, which along with the strong writing is why I recommend both.

The Test of Time

It’s a new month. Already. Another chance to think about what has been accomplished, and what goals remain as we move forward.

Such a busy month was January. Tourneys being played all over the world, every day it seemed. Plus lots of other poker-related distractions to occupy us all.

One item from last month I missed mentioning here was that votes for this year’s Bluff Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards were finally tallied and the winners announced. In the “Favorite Poker Blog” category, our buds over at Wicked Chops claimed their second straight award. Big congrats to the Entities!

I managed to land some votes in the sucker as well, and wanted here to thank everyone who voted for me. Also, thanks a ton to those who’ve sent along nice comments to me regarding getting nominated.

Hard, really, to compare blogs. All are so different. Even just the four that were included in the category are mostly unlike one another in method and approach, really.

As much as I like Pokerati and Wicked Chops, I tend to think of Tao of Poker as providing kind of the “template” for what I imagine a poker blog to be -- a mix of personal anecdote and more general reportage, delivered in a particular style that well communicates the blogger’s personality.

But there are many, many other ways of going about it, obviously, and so “ranking” blogs is about as difficult a task as comparing the relative abilities of poker players (a topic that has been getting a lot of attention here lately). And maybe as futile, too, although I suppose such an exercise affords a certain amount of fun and even usefulness insofar as it gets us thinking about what qualities make a blog (or player) especially good.

Have been pondering a bit lately about the relative value of some of the writing -- both poker-related and otherwise -- I’ve been doing (e.g., blog posts, articles, tourney reporting, and the new novel I keep adding to when I get a chance). Some of it I certainly value and am reasonably proud of. Other stuff tends to vanish more quickly, not necessarily leaving much of an impression on yr humble scribbler.

Some of the latter was written more for money than for other reasons, although financial gain usually does not dictate exactly how I’m personally going to value something I’ve written. As is the case with playing poker (for many), there are a lot of reasons to write -- and benefits to be had from writing -- that don’t have anything to do with making money.

Had an exchange not long ago with someone who had read my post about Jon Bradshaw’s excellent 1975 collection of essays, Fast Company, and then went and picked up the book for himself. He thanked me for drawing his attention to Bradshaw’s book, which contains some of the best poker writing you’re going to find.

I told him I was glad he enjoyed the book, adding that I hoped one day I’d be able to write something as meaningful and lasting about poker.

Or about anything, really (now that I think about it). A goal worth pursuing, I believe.

Poker Book Review: Fast Company by Jon Bradshaw

Fast Company: How Six Master Gamblers Defy the Odds -- and Always Win by Jon Bradshaw is one of those titles some readers of poker books might recognize. I say that because it does get referred to now and then in other poker-related texts. But I’m guessing not too many have had the chance to pick it up and see what it’s all about.

Which is too bad, because as poker and/or gambling books go, I’d rate it as one of the best there is. In fact, I’d say even those who aren’t necessarily interested in gambling or gamblers are likely to enjoy this series of brilliant character sketches, each punctuated by suspenseful accounts of various competitions in which the subjects are involved.

The book was first published in 1975. It never did sell very well, apparently. In fact, I believe it even languished out of print for a time before the London-based High Stakes Publishing put out a new edition in 2003. In his preface to that 2003 edition, Nik Cohn reports that when the book first appeared it was “to modest sales and rave reviews.”

Cohn’s preface does a good job introducing the colorful Bradshaw (who died in 1986 at the age of 48), an American magazine and newspaper writer who might be considered as part of that “New Journalism” group that included folks like Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and others.

Cohn is quick to distinguish Bradshaw from “the so-called gonzo writers,” however, who generally would “turn every story into a stage to strut on.” The distinction Cohn makes has to do with Bradshaw’s approach, which was more concerned with “observation and memory, clean style, [and] an unfailing eye for the telling detail” than promoting oneself as a larger-than-life reporter-character (like Thompson does, especially). In other words, as one soon discovers in Fast Company, his focus was always more directly trained on his subjects than himself.

That said, Bradshaw is, one might say, “part of the story” throughout. The book consists of six chapters, ranging from 20-50 pages, each of which focuses on a single “master gambler” personally interviewed by Bradshaw sometime during the early 1970s. Thus each portrait also involves a relation of the encounter between writer and subject, though that context is consistently set to the side in order to spotlight the interviewee more directly.

Bradshaw presents us three poker players (Puggy Pearson, Johnny Moss, and Titanic Thompson), a tennis pro (Bobby Riggs), a backgammon player (Tim Holland), and a pool player (Minnesota Fats). Of course, while the games may be different, all are first and foremost gamblers. And all six of them, in Bradshaw’s view, are to be recognized as examples of consistent winners, though each in his own way.

As Bradshaw explains in his introduction, he had started out thinking he’d be writing “an account of winners and losers,” and had thus traveled to Las Vegas in search of examples of both. “But it soon became clear,” he explains, “that while losers flourished everywhere, winners were a rare and reticent breed with preferences for camouflage and anonymity.” The winners were much more interesting -- and mysterious -- it turned out, thereby proving more curious as subjects for the investigative reporter to pursue.

The book begins with Pearson, and he provides several observations that sound themes that will subsequently run throughout Fast Company.

Pearson frequently refers to the desire to compete, and “the satisfaction of performing well” as a reward exceeding any money won. He also speaks of how he thinks of himself as a winner, and how doing so is, in his view, an essential component to being a successful gambler.

Additionally, Pearson more than once recognizes how money can affect one’s competitors, and how easily thinking about money can throw people off their games. Indeed, a gambler’s “ability to think clearly under stress” is perhaps the most important trait, according to Pearson.

The next chapter presents Bobby Riggs, the tennis pro whom some of us recall as having played Billie Jean King in that “battle of the sexes” tennis match back in the ’70s. Bradshaw’s interview with Riggs takes place before and after his earlier, less remembered match versus Margaret Court (in May 1972). Like Pearson, Riggs loves the many, complicated mind games associated with competition and gambling. The chapter also includes a lot of interesting observations about men and women and how they might well think differently in such contexts.

Besides being a great reporter -- the blow-by-blow account of the Riggs-Court match is masterfully handled here -- Bradshaw has a wonderful knack for description, especially of the gamblers he’s presenting. For example, Riggs the huckster is said to have “the face of a man who sold encyclopedias from door to door; one was suspicious, but never offended.” Bradshaw goes on to mention how Riggs refers to himself in the third person, “as if he were talking of his fondest invention.”

Riggs is also said to possess that curious (or dubious) understanding of “honesty” common to most successful gamblers who seem to endorse the view that the truth “was for dupes and dummies.” “The truth was an admission of defeat,” writes Bradshaw, attempting to portray Riggs’ mindset. “Something you said in the dark or when you were caught with your hand in the till.” Nearly every page of Fast Company includes examples of such crafty prose.

Subsequent chapters on Minnesota Fats, Tim Holland, and Johnny Moss present each as complicated figures, all acutely aware of the difference between their “real” selves and how they are perceived by others. The same goes for Titanic Thompson, whose story is mostly told via the many myth-like gambling tales with which he’s associated.

Like Pearson, though, all have that necessary self-confidence. “To be a winner,” Thompson tells Bradshaw, “a man has to feel good about himself and know he has some kind of advantage going in. Smart is better than lucky.”

Thompson’s point hints at yet another common thread one finds tying together all of these winning gamblers -- the sense they all share that they aren’t really “gambling” or at least taking unwarranted risks, but participating in contests in which they know they have an edge.

After a lengthy explanation of how he played poker -- constantly studying his opponents’ every move (“I not only played my own hand, I played everybody else’s”), Thompson explains how his approach necessarily gave him an edge, making the game less of a gamble for him than it was for others.

“I treat everything like playing roulette,” he says. “And the only way to win at roulette is to own the wheel. I tell you, gambling is hard work.”

As one might expect, the chapters on Pearson, Moss, and Thompson are where you’ll find most of the poker talk (including a lengthy report of the 1973 WSOP Main Event final table in which Pearson defeated Moss). But they, too, play and bet on other games -- golf, in particular -- and thus the overall focus of the book is really not poker-centric but more about trying to get at a comprehensive and coherent definition of the winning gambler.

Like I say, I recommend Fast Company without reservation to poker fans as well as to fans of good writing, generally speaking. It’s the sort of book that will certainly entertain and edify most readers, and perhaps even inspire most writers. It’s available on Amazon and elsewhere, where one can pick up a used copy for pocket change.