Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker

A nubile blonde squats on her boyfriend's bare chest and he's too stoned to do much about it. Nipple clamps? No Sir, not this time. Even one would just be, like, way generous. Seizing him by the neck with both hands, she raises her shins from the carpet and presses her full dead weight onto his rib cage and solar plexus, forcing more air from his lungs. How's that feet? As she rocks back and forth, they lock eyes. "You like that?" she asks, flirty as ever. "How come?" Her name is Sandra Murphy. When she wears clothes, her taste runs to Gucci, Victoria's Secret, Versace. Her latest ride is the SL 500, in black. She used to work at a high-end sports car emporium in Long Beach, so she knows what the good stuff is. After that gig she moved to Las Vegas and danced topless professionally, but she hasn't had to work in three years -- not since she danced for the guy she is currently laying her hands on. "My old man," she calls him sometimes, or "my husband," especially since she moved in. And she would sort of like to get married. Settle down, kids, that whole deal. Not right now, though. Because you, you've got time, as Liz Phair advises in "Polyester Bride," one of Sandy's all-time favorite songs. Time to get rich, see the world, party hearty. And lately she's been having the time of her used-to-be-not-so-great life. Million-dollar mansion, cute boyfriend, bionic sex, Benz, plus she's keeping her looks, above all. That's the key. In 1989 she was runner-up for the title of Miss Bellflower, a south-central suburb of Los Angeles. That was nine years ago, when Sandy was seventeen, but she maintains her dancer's physique by working out five days a week, and she still keeps the sash in her closet. Most men, her boyfriend included, cannot get enough of her, especially the way she looks now. She is lithe, wet, determined, on top.\ The boyfriend, Ted Binion, is heaving for air. He used to run the Horseshoe Casino with his father and brother, but those days are long gone. The Nevada State Gaming Commission threw its Black Book at Ted a few months ago, banning him from even setting foot in his family's venerable gaming house. Plus his heroin habit has been shutting him down sexually, closing him off from the world, getting him into real fixes. He's promised himself, promised Sandy, promised just about everyone (at least three or four times) that he's going to kick, stick to booze, but he isn't so sure that he can anymore. What he is goddamn sure of is that he's in serious pain. In fact, he could die any moment here. Wrenched into a bone-on-metal knot against the small of his back, his wrists are fastened together with the rhinestone-studded handcuffs he and Sandy picked up a few months ago at a boutique in Caesars Palace, down on the Strip. Clamps, thumbcuffs, clothespins, wet strips of rawhide -- this stuff has been part of their routine since they first got together, a day he's exhausted from cursing. It was part of what got them together, but whose fault was that? They'd always loved boosting their pain-pleasure thresholds with pot, XTC, Ketel martinis, tequila, sometimes bringing one or two of Sandy's girlfriends into the picture. This time Sandy got the drop on him, and she's used it to cross a big line. Ted doesn't have too much fight left, however, so there isn't much else he can do about it. Fifty-five years old, he's been smoking cigarettes, using street drugs, and drinking extravagantly since he was a teenager. Right now -- just after nine on the morning of September 17, 1998 -- he has three balloons' worth of tar heroin and eighty-two Xanax in his stomach and large intestine, some of it already coursing through his arteries, triggering the soporific enzymes he was hoping this time wouldn't take. He's always had a weakness for what he calls Sandy's pretty titties, and he's getting an eyeful right now, whether he wants to or not. In spite of the Xanax, the heroin, and the fact that she's choking him -- maybe these things have all canceled each other, he thinks, like waves out of phase -- there's really no denying the low, distant stir of an erection. It's a million miles away now, thank God, already receding at the speed of light squared . . .\ Because Sandy's new boyfriend, Rick Tabish, kneels on the carpet behind Binion's head, facing Sandy. Standing up, Rick is tall, dark, and, to Sandy's mind, handsome. Six two, two thirty, with springy hair, beady brown eyes. Plenty strong. A star linebacker in high school and college back in Montana, he is now thirty-three, getting soft through the middle, hairline receding above his temples, developing confidence issues. For non-early bloomers, thirty-three can become the age of miracles -- the time to start a family, launch a new venture, make partner, publish your first novel, even found your own worldwide religion. For the last couple of years, though, Rick's been afraid that his best days are a decade behind him, and he desperately needs to make sure that he proves himself wrong. Because what the fuck else is he doing here? People around Las Vegas know him as Ted Binion's friend. They met manning side-by-side urinals at Piero's, and since then they've partied at Delmonico's, the Voodoo Lounge, and plenty of strip clubs together, both with and without Sandy Murphy. When Ted needed a place to stash six tons of silver bullion, he hired Rick's company, MRT Transport, to dig and construct a secret underground vault on Ted's ranch in Pahrump. They used an MRT truck to haul the bars of silver from the Horseshoe's vault out to the new one, along with a few million bucks' worth of rare coins, paper currency, and $5,000 Horseshoe chips. Rick and Ted, in fact, are the only two people who know how to get at that vault. The ranch is now managed by Rick's latest partner, Boyd Mattsen, and its front gate is guarded by peacocks. The peacocks were Teddy's idea.\ The story gets better and better, then worse. Much, much worse. Less than ten minutes ago, for example, Rick and Sandy tried to have sex alongside -- even, for a regrettable moment or two, on top of -- Ted's handcuffed torso. If junkie Ted couldn't fuck her, then Rick would take charge, and Ted would have to watch them, then die. That was their logic. Or, more accurately, their syllogism, if either of them knew what that word meant.\ Ted knew. When he wasn't out (or back home) raising hell, he read books and magazines as though his life depended on it. Civil War, western history, biographies of Sherman and Grant, Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln. He loved local and national politics, public television, the History and Discovery channels. He even loved reading the dictionary. So exactly how had a smart guy like him gotten himself in this fix?\ Ninety minutes earlier, Rick and Sandy forced him to choke down nearly half a liter of tar heroin after facing it with a hundred and seven 50 mg Xanax tablets. They'd handcuffed him at gunpoint and told him to lie on the floor, on his back. After cursing them out, even snickering at their gall, he complied. Still wearing shorts and a navel-baring T-shirt, Sandy straddled Ted's chest and yanked up his shirt, something she'd done countless times -- only now, instead of tweaking his nipples, she was pinching his nostrils together, leaving him no choice but to open his mouth. Careful not to scratch the esophagus, Rick used a turkey baster to squirt the gunky beige concoction past Ted's teeth, down his throat. The stuff reminded Sandy of melting brown pearls, like some stupid mini-sculpture you'd find in New York or LA. In the meantime, gagging and desperate, Ted was offering her $5 million to get off him, and she could tell from the sound of his voice that he meant it. He'd pay her. They could kill Rick right now in self-defense, then get married, have a baby -- a girl baby, maybe, named Tiffany -- and never even have to talk about this crazy Rick bullshit again. All she had to do was take the 9-mm pistol they both knew was hidden in the bench of her white baby grand piano and blow Rick away. (Ted and some cops had taught her to shoot at that range, and later she'd practiced on bottles and cacti in the desert.) Ted was begging her, calling her "baby." That hurt.\ Sandy's outward response was to smirk, glance at Rick, shake her head. Even so, she was tempted. As Ted kept on pleading, her jangly nerves made her cackle and pick up a cardboard Halloween goblin. The goblin, with R.I.P. stenciled across the front in white-lightning letters, was left over from last year's trick-or-treat decorations, and she thought it might add a nice touch; that's why she'd tossed it onto the sofa last night in the first place. "You're already dead," she said now, jouncing the goblin in front of both men. Even Rick, who had beaten and tortured people before to get money, was taken aback by the ghoulish dementia of this weird cardboard Totentanz. Yikes! While Sandy puppeteered the death dance on his half-naked chest, Ted was reduced to proposing to set Rick up in a series of ad hoc construction projects, overpaying him lavishly. "Whatever you want, man. Enough to, you know, change your life."\ "Change my life!?" Rick snorted, "Change my life?!" while Sandy jeered, "Rest in peace, motherfucker."\ "I'm about to start laying the pipe to your wife," Rick added more coolly, making the rhyme without meaning to. He undid his belt. "Keep laying the pipe to her, Teddy, is what I should say." And Teddy had swallowed enough of this gunk, Rick decided as he watched Sandy inch off her T-shirt. Three and a half creamy doses. If that didn't do it, then fuck him.\ Copyright © 2003 James McManus

The End3Dead Money21Family, Career, Even Life35Black Magic69Urge Overkill87The Poker of Science107Nobody Said Anything125Chicks with Decks149Death in the Afternoon185Book-learned207On the Bubble223Song for Two Jims249Tension-discharge269The Last Supper311Either Way337Zombies is Bawth of 'Em355Tons and Tons of Luck369Poker Terminology389Bibliography399Acknowledgments405Index407

\ From the Publisher"James McManus bet big and won. His Positively Fifth Street, an exhilarating chronicle of the 2000 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, will go on the shelf with the classic that inspired it, The Biggest Game in Town, A. Alvarez's account of the 1981 event...As tension packed as any thriller...A great story." —The New York Times Book Review (cover)\ "Artfully woven...McManus captures the adrenaline-juiced tension of the game, and he also captures the anomalous mix of skill, bravado, gamesmanship, and sheer good fortune that a player needs to succeed; the bantering rivalry and comraderie that engulf the survivors; and the knowledge, as Conrad once put it, that 'it is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.'" —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times\ "Astounding...wildly entertaining."—Men's Journal\ "Irresistible. . .McManus gives the reader a riveting over-the-shoulder view of the hand-by-hand action....His prose is flashy, funny, and unexpectedly erudite, but McManus hardly even needs it—with material this rich, he's holding the writer's equivalent of a royal flush."—Time\ "In writing about poker Jim McManus has managed to write about everything, and it's glorious." —David Sedaris, author of Me Talk Pretty One Day\ "James McManus is the only literary poker-player ever to have made it to the final table in 'the Big One,' and he did so by playing brilliantly. I admire his achievement, envy his skill and discipline, and was completely absorbed by his subtle, detailed, lively account of the longest four days of his life." —A. Alvarez, author of The Biggest Game in Town\ \ \ \ \ \ The Washington PostMusing on the trial, recounting his dramatic victory in the satellite and covering the big tourney, McManus has crafted one of the finest books ever written on poker, gambling and murder. There is hardly an aspect of the gambling life that he doesn't honestly examine -- from the sexual energy derived from winning to the need to make sure that at least some of your funds are not readily accessible but under the control of an understanding but not too compliant spouse. — Kim I. Eisler\ \ \ The New York TimesIn recounting his astonishing march to the finals of the poker tournament, Mr. McManus captures the adrenaline-juiced tension of the game, and he also captures the anomalous mix of skill, bravado, gamesmanship and sheer good fortune that a player needs to succeed; the bantering rivalry and camaraderie that engulf the survivors; and the knowledge, as Conrad once put it, that "it is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck." — Michiko Kakutani\ \ \ \ \ The New York Times Sunday Book ReviewIt's a safe wager that professional poker players aren't very good writers, but it's also better than even money that adept writers are, or could be, cunning poker players, for they come to understand motive and risk and instinctively realize that you can't win if you don't bet. James McManus bet big and won. His Positively Fifth Street, an exhilarating chronicle of the 2000 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, will go on the shelf with the classic that inspired it, The Biggest Game in Town, A. Alvarez's account of the 1981 event. — Robert R. Harris\ \ \ \ \ The Los Angeles TimesNow, at last, we have a book that does the same kind of number on Las Vegas by a writer who could not be more of an Everyman — an intensely private and cerebral novelist and poet from Chicago, a plain-looking guy who's worked for a living for the last quarter-century as a literature professor and an absolutely devoted family man, who can't be away from his wife for more than 12 hours without picking up the phone and whose first thought when he travels is what gifts he will bring home to his two little girls. Yet James McManus' Positively Fifth Street — nonfiction though it is — may be the closest thing to a true Beat novel we've seen since Kesey went back to dairy farming, Tom Robbins started going for too many easy laughs, and Thomas Pynchon fell silent again. \ And, like all true Beat writing, "Positively Fifth Street" is a joy to read. — Gerald Nicosia\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIt's a safe bet that no one at Harper's expected novelist McManus, who the magazine sent to Las Vegas to cover the 2000 World Series of Poker, to parlay his advance into chips and play his way into the championship. The scene for this nonfiction work is Binion's Horseshoe Casino, and the game is No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, presumably the purest form of the game. McManus, a poker player since age nine, plays like he writes: gloriously. From the 512 starters, he finds himself, days later, at the championship table, playing for surreal stakes (he wins $866,000 on a single hand). In addition, he is simultaneously covering Ted Binion's gruesome murder trial, which just happens to coincide with the Series. McManus reads with a poker face. Seemingly calm and impassive, his voice may initially make listeners wonder if the author is the right person for the job. But although McManus's style doesn't change, listeners' perception of it will. His even keel is a deception, and as he is describing making quarter-million-dollar bets after playing cards with the world's best for days on end, listeners will be able to feel his heart racing under the calm fa ade. Simultaneous release with the Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover (Forecasts, Feb. 24). (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalHere is a rare work that combines personal memoir, journalism, nonfiction, and lurid crime reporting into a book that is genuinely informative, fun, and well constructed. Novelist and poet McManus wraps together three stories. First is his reporting on the trial of a well-known Vegas socialite and her boyfriend for the killing of her husband, casino owner and poker tournament host Ted Binion. The second story is that of the bizarre and fantastic world of no-limit "hold 'em" poker (the game favored at the World Series). The last thread is McManus's decision to take his advance from Harper's to cover the trial and the tournament and enter it himself. McManus moves gracefully among topics like the corrupt intersection of Vegas politics and casinos; game theory, statistics and poker odds; his own history with the game; the culture of high-stakes poker; and Ted Binion's transparent and grisly murder. As well as providing a guide to poker's seminal works (Doyle Brunson's Super/System and David Sklanksy's Theory of Poker), this book is the heir to Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as the effortless distillation of a small piece of Las Vegas's madness. Recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/02.]-James Miller, Springfield Coll. Lib., MA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsNovelist and poet McManus (Going to the Sun, 1996, etc.) sits in on the World Series of Poker. Harper’s magazine assigned him to cover the progress of female players, the impact of information-age technology on the game, and the murder trial of Ted Binion, a member of the family whose Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas hosts the series. But McManus is also a player--kitchen-table level, granted--who wants in on the action (that Harper's advance will do nicely) and does very well indeed. As he charts his play through the ranks, the author reports on his guilt at having so much fun while so far from his wife and daughters (in short, wonderful phone conversations, his spouse invariably punches his ticket) and deals out aperçus ("the beauty of no-limit hold ’em, in fact, parallels that of all human mating procedures") while spinning off like sparks from a pinwheel all manner of subplot and tangential material: game theory, card-deck history, the poker table’s strange weather, the literature of poker, and the software that has opened the game to so many. The murder tale is vile, the female players a story in themselves, but what powers it all is McManus’s nearly hand-by-hand recounting of his time at the table: the rhythm of play, the feints and dares, the unbearable Russian-roulette drama of the all-in hands. Though the language of poker can be as obtuse as haiku, McManus uses it to dazzle the reader, convey the torque ("I’m afraid my adrenaline might rupture an eye"), and share the fall when "with an ace on the turn, and a ten on the river, it's not even close. The Satanic Prince of Noodges has forked me down into the pitch." A heart-in-its-mouth card story: urgent, potent, and damn jolly.\ \