Ghosts at the Table: Riverboat Gamblers, Texas Rounders, Internet Gamers, and the Living Legends Who Made Poker What It Is Today

2008 World Series of Poker starts May 30 and runs through July 17, 2008. The biggest event in poker today is described in this anthology of United States players from old western gaming in Arizona, Texas, and Nevada. We are swept along the trail from North Dakota and meander down the gold and silver rush towns to now ghost towns. As time passes in the twentieth century we are told of the exploits of Wild Bill Hickok and how he played poker with his six shooter. In response to a full house, Wild Bill said that he had 3 Aces over 2 sixes, when the other player said he saw only one six Hickok put his pistol on the table and said here is the other six. He won the hand! This anecdotal form of writing is most interesting as Des Wilson takes us through the portals of moments when ghosts are visited in many poker parlors as he tries to imagine what it was like to have lived in that bygone era. Brief skirmishes are recounted as he tells of battles which were fought and the connection to poker is related in all of them. His description of the gun fight at the OK Corral is wonderful, and the fact they all played poker the night before is fascinating. The book seems to be two books in one; Wilson is so enamored with the WSOP that the second half tells of the personalities of the players of today. He does relate the formation of the event by Benny Binion at his famous Horseshoe in Las Vegas in 1970 and touches upon his ghost. Those players who will pay $10,000 to enter Harrah's Rio, the situs of the 2008 contest, owe their opportunity to play to the ghosts of the past and those of the present. Being lucky and getting good cards is only part of winning in Texas Hold 'Em, winning the gold bracelet is exemplified as being a paragon of the bluff. Clark Isaacs Reviewer

WELL WRITTEN, EXCELLENT PICTURE OF POKER SINCE THE 1800S. VERY ACCURATE WITH PLENTY OF NEW MATERIAL.

Wilson starts his book with a helpful preface that divides poker into four ages: the initial frontier stages, that lasted from the game's introduction to the US to the closing of the frontier, which in poker terms correlates with the last mineral booms in the 1890s/1900s. The second age starts much later, with the heyday of the Texas road gamblers in the 1950s. This is a short era that is followed by the Las Vegas era, which symbolically began with the first World Series of Poker held at Binion's Horseshoe in 1970. The final age of poker is the current boom, fueled equally by television and the Internet, which most people would date to 2002. It's a good division, though it neglects the "rank and file" of poker in some ways. The thousands of backroom poker games that sustained the "sport" during the first half of the 20th century, for example, are nowhere here. There's good reason for that-they were mostly undocumented, and little heralded. For good reason. There is nothing exceptional or heroic about them. But history is rarely exceptional or heroic. The book properly begins with Wilson checking into the Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota, and learning that a real ghost lives there-the spirit of Seth Bullock, the original proprietor, who frequently shows his disgust over the current staff's lassitude by shaking the odd plate or turning on a random blender. That's when I realized that the ghosts of the title aren't a metaphor: for Wilson (and for poker players) the legends of the past really are ghosts, who still have an incorporeal presence and can still do us harm. As Wilson admits in the preface, this is not an exhaustive history of poker as a historian would write it, chronological narrative interspersed with hard-won quantatative data about numbers of card decks sold, arrest for poker-playing, and the like. Instead, it's an impressionistic journey-literally-through the past and into the present of poker. Wilson's strategy is to revisit the scenes of past poker greatness, from Tombstone to Texas to Binion's Horseshoe, and through research, interviews, and observation, try to recover what is lost. Luckily, many of the figures of the last three eras are still alive, and those that have passed on are survived by friends, rivals, and associates. There a real richness of detail here, and no matter what your previous knowledge of poker, your insight into its history will be enriched Ghosts at the Table. Two sections that stand out are Wilson's conversation with Amarillo Slim, probably the most controversial poker figure in its modern era, and his investigation into the disappearance of 1979 WSOP champion Hal Fowler. Wilson's writing on Slim has a balance that is rare-most people either love or hate the lanky rounder-and the facts that Wilson's unearthed about Fowler, while in the end a bit underwhelming, are a neat bit of detective work, and show an inquisitiveness that's too rare in most students of the game. Ditto for his questioning

a must have book for anyone who has the slighest interest in poker or gambling. a really great book!!

"The wild weird money world of professional gamblers is illustrated with stories from the riverboats to Vegas. Your own way to learn all about the World Series of Poker but for the price of this book instead of the ten thousand dollar buy in."