Travel Report, EPT13 Prague, Day 10 -- Food, Friends, and the Familiar

They are down to six now in the European Poker Tour Prague Main Event. David Peters remains in contention, and also could (I believe) overtake Fedor Holz for the 2016 Global Poker Index Player of the Year with his finish.

The last EPT High Roller is also down to a final group of 22 which like the Main will be playing down to a finish on Monday. Adrian Mateos, Ihar Soika, Martin Finger, and William Kassouf are among those still in the running over there.

We finished up by nine o’clock or so, and so Vera and I and a few of my colleagues ended up reassembling over at the Cafe Bistro in the Hilton Prague for an evening meal. That's above is a shot looking down on the restaurant, taken from the glass elevator I’ve ridden up and down many times over the last 10 days.

The dinner was enjoyable, bookended by a couple of fun conversations with friends (old and new).

When Vera and I got there we joined Mickey May, one of the team photographers here in Prague. I liked introducing her to Vera and hearing her tell the story of her husband, Jesse, writing Shut Up and Deal and how he named his protagonist (a fictional version of himself) after her -- Mickey Dane. (Mickey is from Denmark.)

Later on we were joined by the poker player Kristen Bicknell, the Canadian who has now won a couple of WSOP bracelets including one this past summer in a $1,500 NLHE Bounty event. She went fairly deep in the Eureka Main last week (finishing 31st) and played a couple of other events here, too.

Was fun hearing her tell us her interesting story. She was an online grinder, playing millions of hands over several years and being a SuperNova Elite on PokerStars. She won the Ladies Event at the WSOP in 2013 -- something I recall as I was there that summer, although I didn’t report on that event -- though she really wasn’t playing live all that much back then.

More recently, though, she’s begun taking more poker trips and playing more tournaments, including having a run in the EPT Grand Final Main in the spring (where she finished 60th) and winning that second bracelet over the summer.

As was the case with Mickey, I’d heard some of Kristen’s story before, having heard her tell it on the PokerNews Podcast back in early July. Even the meal was familiar, as I’d had the same burger at that same restaurant a few days before. Can be nice, though, to experience a little bit of the familiar when in a foreign land.

One more day, and one which Vera and I intend to spend part of doing a little more touristy stuff, including a museum visit. Deciding between the Franz Kafka one and the Museum of Communism at the moment (kind of leaning toward the latter).

More tomorrow -- meanwhile check the PokerStars blog for updates on the poker.

Morality in the Muck?

I recently reposted an interview here with the poker writer, commentator, and player Jesse May, reading through it once more as I did and enjoying a lot of the insights May shares as he discusses his novel Shut Up and Deal, the origins of Late Night Poker, and other poker-related topics.

Meanwhile I’ve been working further on another project which just so happened to carry me back to David Apostolico’s interesting 2005 book Machiavellian Poker Strategy: How to Play Like a Prince and Rule the Poker Table. I remember first reading Apostolico’s book right about the time I interviewed May, in fact (about four years ago).

In the past I used to teach a Great Books class which included The Prince -- taught it many times -- and so I remember getting a kick out of all the many connections Apostolico was able to make between poker strategy and theory and Machiavellian principles of leadership and government.

Looking again at Machiavellian Poker Strategy, I happened to notice kind of an interesting contrast between something May says in the interview and a point Apostolico makes early on in his book. It probably isn’t fair to either of them to isolate the quotes as I’m about to do, but the difference between them was so stark I thought I’d share if only to invite others’ consideration.

In Part 1 of the interview during our discussion of Shut Up and Deal, May more than once talks about the issue of morality in poker, in particular noting how the game in fact presents a significant challenge to players’ moral sensibilities, or at least did back during the 1990s when he played (and when his book is set).

“One of the things about poker, especially back then, is that you are faced with so many moral choices,” says May. “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.”

If you’ve ever read Shut Up and Deal, you know exactly how what May is talking about applies to the complicated network of relationships in which his main character, Mickey, finds himself entangled. Or if you’ve lived the live of a full-time poker player and/or gambler, you may also know what he’s getting at with regard to the moral challenge the game provides.

In any case, I had that observation in mind when rereading the following passage occurring early in Apostolico’s book:

“Since poker can be an unjust game, you must do everything in your power to ensure that you succeed,” writes Apostolico. “So long as you play within the rules, you can and should use every means at your disposal to beat your opponent. Poker provides a forum for you to implement guilt free the most ruthless of Machiavellian principles. It is your opportunity to be a Prince.”

That passage reminded me of discussions with my classes about Machiavelli’s recommendations to would be rulers not to let questions of good or bad interfere with governing successfully and above all retaining power. The Prince advocates throughout practicality, the importance of appearances and being able to manipulate the masses, and setting aside anything not directly related to winning and/or having power over others. (In other words, it describes modern politics, more or less.)

Meanwhile the passage seems to run counter to what May is saying in the way it suggests poker exists as a kind of morality-free zone rather than an area in which moral questions are of utmost importance.

I think, though, I could be drawing a false comparison here. May is talking not just about the strategy of playing a hand of poker, but about living the life of a full-time poker player, while Apostolico is focused more narrowly on the way Machiavellian principles relate to succeeding when playing a zero sum game.

Then again, maybe the two aren’t in disagreement at all, and both are talking about how poker (in a sense) challenges each player not to care about others’ welfare as it necessarily affects your own in a negative way -- a challenge to which each player’s response is necessarily going to be personal.

I thought that was an interesting enough juxtaposition to share while also giving me a chance again to recommend both Shut Up and Deal and Machiavellian Poker Strategy: How to Play Like a Prince and Rule the Poker Table.

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.

Travel Report: 2015 PCA, Day 6 -- What May Had to Say About the PCA

Up against it again here in the Bahamas as the tournaments just keep coming, knocking all of us around from event to event as though we were still on those tubes riding the rapids constantly circling the Atlantis resort. Wanted just to mention quickly today how a highlight from yesterday involved talking at length with another favorite poker writer of mine, Jesse May.

The primary focus of our discussion was to assess the significant place of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on the tourney poker schedule, exploring an idea that in fact the PCA might even be the most direct measure of skill there is, as far as tournament series go.

May had some great ideas to share regarding that tentative thesis, plus other interesting observations about the current state of poker as well. You can click over to the PokerStars blog to read them in the post “Could the PCA be poker’s most important series? It just may, says Jesse May.”

We talked about a lot of other things, too, that didn’t go into that post, some of which I might try to share here next week once I’m back on the farm with a clearer head. As anyone who has read May’s 1998 novel Shut Up and Deal or any of his other writings about the poker world well knows, he has both perspective and insight to share on all things poker, including how the game gets covered and presented by those of us who spend our time scribbling about it.

While you’re over there reading what May had to say, click around and follow the other PCA Main Event coverage, the start of the $25K High Roller, and the Americas Cup of Poker on the PokerStars blog. Check the live reporting at PokerNews, too, for hands, counts, and more from both the Main and the High Roller.

Latest on Learn

Just a quick note tonight to point you to some new pieces over on the Learn.PokerNews site.

Tommy Angelo has returned with another installment of his “Tilt for Beginners” series, this time telling a short anecdote from a recent visit to the Casino Montreal where he encountered French-style playing cards. That meant he was dealt some Rs, Vs, and Ds and responded with some understandable bafflement.

The article is titled “Miffed in Montreal.” Click to read, and also check out the ultra-cool photo illustrating the piece.

Nate Meyvis, co-host of the Thinking Poker podcast along with Andrew Brokos, has contributed two great articles under the heading of “Fighting Back.” Both address the situation of an experienced player targeting a less savvy new player with specific tactics designed to unnerve, and Meyvis offers some concrete pointers the newer player having to deal with such.

Check ’em out: Part I covers aggression while Part II talks about how to respond to players using talking and trapping as tactics.

Finally, Jim Dixon is a writer who has been contributing some cool pieces as of late.

One called “All I Really Need to Know About Poker I Learned From Sherlock Holmes” does some sleuthing through some A.C. Doyle stories to discover some poker-related advice.

And another one today by Jim called “Mastering Luck: It’s Not the Same As Being Lucky” that talks about the importance of not letting bad fortune at the tables beat you down, with another literary source providing some inspiration again -- Jesse May’s Shut Up and Deal.

The Ledger

“Everybody’s got their own ideas about keeping a ledger, but one thing’s in common -- they’re personal.”

So says Mickey Dane in Jesse May’s 1998 poker-themed novel Shut Up and Deal. The line comes at the beginning of one of many passages in the book that remind us Mickey is an existentialist. He makes his own meaning or “order” of his existence, with the narrative itself perhaps representing an effort to do just that.

As he says early on when introducing his story, “there is no reality, it all depends on how I present what is and how I cloud it.” We know from the start this full-time poker player doing whatever he can to stay in action in mid-1990s Atlantic City (and elsewhere) is sharing an entirely subjective view of his experiences. He freely admits throughout that his judgment about what is “real” and what isn’t might occasionally be suspect.

Indeed, near the end Mickey wonders aloud whether or not all of the mind games he plays with himself -- symbolized by the frequent changing of clothes during one long last losing streak -- might add up to him trying to trick himself into believing something about his existence. “Either in poker everything is very illusory, or I’m pulling one giant hoax on myself,” he admits.

The ledger to which Mickey is referring is a literal one, the place where some of us who play poker write down how we’re doing. Like the narrative or other efforts by Mickey to “put some order” into his existence, the ledger is likewise a means to make sense of it all. But Mickey is as cynical about ledger-keeping as about any effort to make things add up (so to speak).

“People keep it to try to prove to themselves that they should keep playing, that they’re ahead,” explains Mickey. “Keep it under their pillow to consult like a Bible on those dark and stormy nights. Like anything on paper is gonna make sense of the chaos of the gambling world....”

I’ve always kept such a ledger. I’ve written here before about how I believe doing so helped me tremendously early on, becoming an important part of the process by which I was able to start winning at poker -- “to prove to myself that I should keep playing,” to paraphrase Mickey.

After a while the keeping of the ledger -- in a black, Bible-looking Moleskine book, actually -- became less meaningful to me, a habit I’d begun and continued well beyond the point of it mattering that much to my abilities as a player, or even my idea of myself as a player.

When Mickey says the ledger is “personal,” he isn’t necessarily talking about it being something that should be hidden away like a diary or anything else private. He means that even if someone else were to look at the ledger, it wouldn’t possess the same meaning that it does to the person keeping it. The numbers I’ve written down over the years in my little black book couldn’t possibly mean the same thing to someone else that they do to me. Nor would I be able to look at the figures listed in your ledger -- if you happen to keep one -- and guess what exactly they meant to you.

Like I say, I still keep entering numbers, although they’re no longer anywhere close to as consequential as they once were for me. Really the whole idea of the ledger has faded in importance over the last year since Black Friday.

But still I keep on with it. Why? I can’t explain, really. It’s personal.

True Story

Last week I had the chance to chat with Jesse May, author of the poker novel Shut Up and Deal (1998) and much-traveled poker commentator. Great fun, that.

Our paths had intersected a couple of times before on the tourney circuit, and I always enjoyed talking with him as someone very knowledgeable both about the world of poker today as well as the history of the game. I am also a big fan of May’s podcast, The Poker Show, which is always entertaining and informative.

I decided to include Shut Up and Deal on the syllabus in my “Poker and American Film and Culture” class -- part of the literature unit -- and we read and discussed the book over the last few classes. I thought this would be a good time to speak with May, especially about Shut Up and Deal since my students and I were in the middle of discussing it.

May and I talked about a number of topics, but mostly concentrated on his novel as well as his involvement with the early years of the historically-important U.K. poker show “Late Night Poker.” Today on Betfair I posted the first part of our interview, focusing mainly on Shut Up and Deal, and next week I’ll be sharing his memories of “Late Night Poker.”

Many times when I interview someone there will be material that doesn’t make it into the final product -- “outtakes” that might be interesting but have to be cut out, usually as part of the effort to keep the interview a reasonable length. I thought I’d pass along one such item from the first part of my interview with May, something that I didn’t include over on Betfair but which I thought for a couple of reasons would be appropriate to share here.

One reason is that it relates to Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town, a book to which I not long ago devoted a series of posts. The other is it has to do with how difficult it can be sometimes to tell the difference between truth and fiction, a topic which somehow seems appropriate to write about on April Fool’s Day.

We’d gotten to the part of the conversation where I mention some of the themes I see present in Shut Up and Deal. One such theme is this struggle between “reality” and “romance” that occurs in the book -- how some characters seem to view poker “realistically” while others have a more “romantic” idea of the game. And a couple of characters seem to be going back and forth between the two points of view, including Mickey, the narrator and central protagonist.

Anyhow, when I mentioned that theme I noted how it also comes up a lot in The Biggest Game in Town. (In fact, one of my posts a few weeks ago about the book -- titled “Reality and Romance” -- focused squarely on that very topic.) I said something to May about how Alvarez's book addresses this same struggle in poker to be “realistic,” and May had what I thought was a very interesting response.

“Listen, I love The Biggest Game in Town... it’s one of my favorite books,” said May. “But it’s a funny thing... [Alvarez] went out to Vegas and sat around and met Benny Binion and Moss and Amarillo Slim and Puggy and basically whatever they told him, he just accepted as gospel as [though] that’s the way it happened... [when in fact a lot of it] is about as far from the truth as possible!”

May noted how he’d researched a lot of the stories told in the book, coming to find that many aren’t quite as “realistic” -- and are more embellished or “romanticized” -- than we might realize.

“The amazing thing about those guys is that they basically [all] got their stories straight.... They knew that the reality was not for mass consumption. And [so] these stories were created and repeated with enough detail and by enough of them that they just became accepted as the truth. And maybe some of them even believe now that that’s what actually happened, but it’s not.”

May added that he’d talked with Alvarez about this a couple of times, and his response was that it was “incredible” how all of those whom he interviewed could have agreed upon all of the details of some of the stories, “especially stuff about Johnny Moss and Nick ‘the Greek.’” Indeed, I knew already that Alvarez’s account of that big heads-up match between Moss and Dandalos at Binion’s that took place somewhere around 1951 includes details many have since disputed, and that a great deal regarding that event is highly uncertain.

“Those guys know that to survive they have to be aware of their own reality,” added May, “but they certainly are not going to tell anybody about it!”

I told May how interesting it was to consider how Alvarez’s book talks so much about being “realistic” -- with quotes from several players furthering the exploration of that topic -- yet the book itself perhaps reports things as true that are in fact embellished or at least “romanticized” somewhat.

Like I say, I thought that was an interesting enough item to share here. Especially on a day devoted to trying to fool each other into second-guessing what’s “real” and what’s not.

Have a good weekend, all. And -- today, particularly -- don’t believe everything you read!