Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker
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Rough sex, black magic, and the science—and eros—of gambling.Meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas.James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper’s to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23-million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament’s prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether.McManus risks his entire Harper’s advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself—the players, the hand-to-hand, and his own unlikely progress in it.Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America’s card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man’s effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"—the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts. The New York Times In 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 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
