May 14, 2003
Positively Fifth Street
I didn't read the Harper's article that was the basis for this book, but my friends Chas and Greg did. They immediately decided that what they needed in their lives was a regular poker night, and I can see why. Jim McManus, a freelance writer and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was given the assignment of going to the 2000 World Series of Poker at Binion's Horseshow in Las Vegas and writing about the rise of top-tier professional women players. He accepted the job, then convinced his wife that it was a good idea to take the $4000 advance -- money, it becomes clear, that his wife and children could really use -- and use it to enter the WSOP himself. McManus, a pretty good player and afficianado of the game since childhood, said that he wanted to be able to give his story color, but he really just wanted to see how good a poker player he was. It turns out that he's pretty good, as he wins entry into the game itself (with its $10,000 entry fee) from a feeder game, and then keeps on winning.
The poker writing is just fabulous; this is really solid sports writing, the kind that can actually extract tension from something like waiting to see whether his opponent checks or raises. He gets some decent interviews with the women poker players he was sent to cover, too. While the tournament is going on, McManus is also keeping an eye on a murder trial; Ted Binion, the dissolute grandson of the founder of the WSOP (who had recently been banned for life from the casino business by the Nevada Gaming Commission), was pumped full of Xanax and heroin by Sandy Murphy, his stripper girlfriend. This is fine, lurid, true crime stuff, but it's just not as interesting as the poker, and McManus's hyperventilating prose really hurts him here. His philosophical ramblings are even worse. If I want to read a book about the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas, I'll read Hunter Thompson; if I want to read a book that uses sports as a mirror for sociological musings, I'll find something about Muhammed Ali; if I want to read vaguely sourced notions about the hidden meanings of cards, I'll find my copy of Tim Powers' Last Call. But the poker stuff really sings; as McManus gets deeper into the tournament and McManus pays less attention to the trial, Positively Fifth Street becomes an absolute pageturner.
Binion's Horseshoe. My goodness.