Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People: the Memoirs of the Greatest Gambler Who Ever Livedby Amarillo Slim Preston and Greg Dinkin
In today’s poker boom, many of the top players are becoming celebrities of a sort. They are on TV almost every day, they have books, DVDs, souvenir chip sets, you name it. It was not the same over 30 years ago, when Thomas “Amarillo Slim” Preston became the first famous poker player, with a book deal and a dozen appearances on the Tonight Show. How Slim got there, and what he did to maintain his celebrity, is the topic of the autobiography,Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People
, co-written with the “Poker MBA” Greg Dinkin.Slim doesn’t skip any portion of his life, from learning how to play snooker while at boarding school in Arkansas, taking his billiards talents on the road as a hustler and USO entertainer while stationed overseas, then as an adult learning poker and proposition wagering. In his travels, he meets all of the legendary gamblers of the 20th Century: Titantic Thompson, Nick the Greek, Minnesota Fats, Johnny Moss, Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, the Binion family, Puggy Pearson and a host more. Most of the yarns are tremendous, but also tremendously entertaining. The last section of the book, describing a near-death experience while camping with friends and his co-author, ends the book by putting a lot of things in the proper perspective. All of it is told in Slim’s “howdy, neighbor” style, with co-author Dinkin tying the tales together into a narrative and making sure the commas are all in the right place. The book reads like Slim is sitting down over a cup of coffee and telling you about his life, which is high praise for Dinkin’s work.
To a poker enthusiast, the most interesting section of the book is in the middle, starting with Slim’s burgeoning relationship with Doyle Brunson and Bryan “Sailor” Roberts in the mid-60s, traveling from game to game across Texas. They gambled and took book their way across the South, Mexico, and up into Las Vegas, where they were an integral part of the establishment of the World Series of Poker. When Slim won the second freeze-out championship in 1972, Benny Binion realized that Slim had media potential, which led to the guest spots with Johnny Carson and Slim’s future career as a poker room host and quasi-celebrity.
All of this, however, is covered in less time than Slim spends on various pool games in his youth. Other than a couple of anecdotes and a Top 10 list of tips, the book isn’t instructional in that regard at all when it comes to poker. If you’re looking for direct poker advice and that’s all, this isn’t the book for you. It should be, though. A big part of learning how to play successful poker is learning how to gamble, and for that, this book is loaded with stories (and the advice is solid even if the truthful footing for every tale in the book isn’t).
You will learn quite a bit about how to hustle, how to book and bet sports, and most importantly, how to use your wits and your intelligence to spot an edge. Slim lived his entire life and built a fortune based on that edge, and capitalizing on it. He beat tennis champ Bobby Riggs at ping-pong, former teen champ Willie Nelson at dominos, and Bob Stupak at, well, just about anything you can gamble on. It’s all in the book. If you’ve read other poker books, you won’t learn a lot more about Doyle Brunson, for example. But you’ll have a hell of a time learning about one of the great characters in the history of, well, history. If there wasn’t an Amarillo Slim, you’d have to make him up.
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