Biggest Game in TownA. Alvarez
For people just jumping on the poker bandwagon today, there are enormous, high-profile televised tournaments every month (if not every week), tons of media coverage of the game, and bookstore shelves lined with titles about poker. Twenty-five years ago, this was hardly the case. Much of the biggest action in Las Vegas was still downtown, Benny Binion was the high priest of Glitter Gulch, and the World Series of Poker was made up almost exclusively of the toughest, hardest, battle-tested road gamblers around. This is the scene for the granddaddy of poker stories, A. Alvarez’s Biggest Game in Town
.Alvarez came to Las Vegas to cover the five weeks of the 1981 World Series of Poker and to gain insight into the poker subculture and those in it. What commences is a fascinating study into Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss, Puggy Pearson, Jack “Treetop” Straus and many other professionals and amateurs, as well as Benny Binion and the “new” heir apparent to the Horseshoe, Benny’s son Jack. The book deals very little in strategy, but through the anecdotes and atmospheric description, you are steeped in the techniques and philosophies that make the great players great at the highest echelons of poker. After reading this, you will have gained a new appreciation for what it takes to put your stake on the finest of edges, and without even knowing it, you’ll likely have a new attitude or approach to your own poker style.
Those who have read other poker books, especially instructional titles like “Super/System” or the Sklansky/Mallmuth series, will be blown away by how this book is written. Alvarez is, first and foremost, a brilliant writer and poet who was a contemporary of Sylvia Plath. His descriptions are so vivid that you’ll smell the must, the smoke, the heavy air of the Horseshoe in every page. It’s not overwhelmingly long, because Alvarez carefully picks and chooses his subjects and phrases to make the most of what story he feels should be conveyed. It’s written like a great novel, one that urges you to sit down and take a seat at the felt even though the events and locations were played out long ago.
Many of you who have read a lot of poker books will know many of these stories before we start. The tales of Jimmy Chagra golfing with Puggy & Doyle, the publication of Super/System and many others have been repeated throughout the last few years of publication, primarily because Alvarez does such a great job of presenting those tales here. When you read stories about Eric Drache in books like “The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King”, or hear of his involvement with Henry Orenstein to create the “Poker Superstars” TV series on Fox, you will know him better because he’s been portrayed so well here as a player and de facto tournament director. The same can be said about Bobby Baldwin, Chip Reese, Mickey Appleman and many other icons of poker lore. Jim McManus’s “Positively Fifth Street” holds “The Biggest Game in Town” up like a shrine, and deservedly so. If you have any interest in knowing what it was like “back in the day”, A. Alvarez’s Biggest Game in Town
takes you there.To buy this book on Amazon.com click here: Biggest Game in Town
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