I’ve been reading a lot of gambling related books recently – although Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion’s World Series of Poker by James McManus is the first non-fiction book I’ll review here. Sent by Harper’s to produce a story on the growing success of women in the biggest poker event on the planet and on the trial of the stripper and her boyfriend charged with killing Ted Binion, McManus finds himself in the middle of his story when he risks his book advance to win entry into the 2000 tournament. His story takes on a new dimension when he bucks the odds and makes it to the promised land of poker, the “final table.”

Poker, in particular Texas Holdem poker, is becoming more and more popular these days – especially over the last few months with the success of the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel and the unlikely winner’s story in the 2003 Binion’s World Series of Poker where a completely inexperienced tournament player, Chris Moneymaker (with a name like that how could he not win?), went from playing on-line poker over the Internet to winning $2.5 Million against the pros in Vegas. At my card club the holdem tables are packed morning, noon and night and the number of new players has been quite welcome by those looking to “teach” the novices.

The heart of Positively Fifth Street is definitely the story of McManus’ progress through the World Series of Poker that year, but through it all the author winds in the trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, accused in the killing of Ted Binion of the infamous Vegas Binions. Ted Binion represents everything that “Bad Jim,” McManus’ evil persona, would do on a trip to Vegas – a Hunter S. Thompson smorgasbord of drugs, women and gambling. Sandy and Rick are the “Murderers” in the subtitle and the strip club where she danced and met Ted Binion is the “Cheetahs.”

The challenge of writing a book that has many stories intertwined is keeping the readers interest in all of the stories, lest he skip forward to the parts he has become more interested in. While I enjoyed this book immensely I only gave it a 3 for that reason – I found myself skimming the non-poker related parts of the book. It’s not that the background of Ted Binion and the murderers is not interesting, on the contrary it makes for a very unique story, it’s just that I enjoy more reading about the details of the poker tournament. I’d be willing to bet other readers skimmed those parts instead!

McManus does a nice job telling the story of his progress through the tournament. We share his tension as more than once he almost succumbs to an early departure, only to be saved “on the river,” or the final card of a Texas Holdem hand (that’s also Fifth Street, hence the book’s title). His description of the hands and his interaction with the players both at the table and off is memorable and enjoyable reading. It’s worth the price of admission.

Overall I rate Positively Fifth Street a solid 3 and if you can focus on the entire book better than I, you may just find it deserves even higher.

If you are interested in learning how to play Texas Holdem I highly recommend Winning Low-Limit Holdem (2nd Edition) by Lee Jones. Two great poker narratives are The Biggest Game in Town by A. Alvarez and Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player by Anthony Holden. Watch, read and learn – and I’ll see you at the river.

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Next up in a small line of gambling related reviews is The Counter by Kevin Blackwood. A top blackjack player and card counter, Blackwood has written a brilliant debut novel that sucks you into the world of a card counter and doesn’t let you go until it spits you out in the final satisfying chapter.

The protagonist here is Raven Townsend, a college student stuck in Maine who, despite a Baptist upbringing, decides that the answer in his life is to win a million dollars playing blackjack. To do that he becomes a student of the art of card-counting and the book follows his adventures as he goes around the country learning what it means to try to beat the casino’s at their own game. As Raven explains, “The way I play it isn’t gambling.”

The author’s first-hand knowledge of blackjack and card counting is evident throughout the book. He also takes us into many real and fictional casinos around the country, a few of which I’ve toiled at myself. This is the sort of stuff that other authors just can’t achieve through research – only with years and years in the trenches can one write about blackjack as Blackwood does. What blackjack player can’t relate when Raven throws more money after more money on those make it or break it double-downs?

In my review of Dice Angel I suggested that in order to achieve the perfect 5 star rating it would need to contain more craps. Well, The Counter provides a ton of blackjack – enough so that if everything else were perfect it would get my highest rating. But Blackwood makes too much of an attempt to tie in his religious beliefs and I think that it distracts from the flow of the book, so I can’t give it top marks. The morality shown by Raven’s love interest Cynthia just struck me as out of place and I wonder if some of it wasn’t the author’s guilt for his time spent toiling in the casinos. In any case I was able to enjoy the book immensely despite these occasional forays away from the gambling.

Perhaps most distracting from the book was Raven’s decision to start using electrical devices which clearly moved him from the realm of a Counter living on his own skill to a cheat. Of course this led to some important plot elements but it was clear from the book’s description of the Atlantic City casinos that it didn’t need to have happened as those casinos could not kick card counters out. So why didn’t Raven just apply his skill there? It didn’t make sense to me and it bugged me until the end of the book. Not so much so though that I can’t recommend the book.

Kevin Blackwood has hit the mark with The Counter – a fast-paced page turner with believable characters and authentic gambling sequences that are befitting of a real-world blackjack expert. Recommended.

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I thoroughly enjoyed Dice Angel. I came across this book from a usenet posting in rec.gambling.craps from the author, Brian Rouff, who was giving away free copies of his book. Rouff is a Vegas local and Dice Angel is his first book. My immediate reaction was to dismiss it until I started reading some of the replies from people who had actually read the book. Then I checked it out on Amazon, where it maintains a solid 5 star rating with over 60 reviews. I decided to give it a try myself and I’m glad I did.

Dice Angel is the story of a down on his luck Vegas bar owner named Jimmy Delaney who is getting it from all sides from his ex-wife, thieves, crooked business partners and the IRS. Faced with the daunting task of coming up with $50,000 in back taxes Jimmy seeks the council of a mysterious woman named Amaris – otherwise known as the Dice Angel.

Amaris claims to be able to channel positive energy and bring luck to those who employ her – luck that if focused on a few good runs at the craps tables in Vegas could make quick work of his large debt and put him back in the good graces of the IRS.

Most of the book is spent getting to know Jimmy and his predicament, with the final third dedicated to his attempt at finding that lucky streak he doesn’t think he has in him.

The dialog was entertaining with a sort of new Damon Runyon-like quality, and the author’s knowledge of Las Vegas added a nice local color. The description of the craps sequences was very good, and the only thing that keeps me from giving the book a perfect 5 is that I didn’t think there was enough craps in it – at the end of the story I didn’t quite feel as satisfied as I could have had there been more gambling. Now I completely admit I am not partial in this respect and that my enjoyment of craps may be impairing my judgment here, I think this book will appeal to a wide audience and it’s perfectly reasonable to believe the author made a conscious decision to limit the amount of craps in it for that very reason.

Dice Angel is one hell of a fun read that should appeal to everyone whether you go to Vegas to roll the bones a couple of times each year like I do, or you simply enjoy fast moving quick hitting stories.

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I wanted to enjoy The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security, I really did. I have some connections with Kevin Mitnick and his ilk and the teaser for the book sounds good: A legendary hacker reveals how to guard against the gravest security risk of all – human nature. Human nature is the focus of the book – the manipulating of it for gain called Social Engineering. This concept would make a terrific chapter or two in a comprehensive book on security. As a book it drags on and is extremely repetitive.

The book would have been better with real stories from Mitnick’s past – instead we are presented with a series of examples from anonymous contributors. Sure, it could be that Mitnick really did all of this and he is making it look like stories from others, but I don’t think so. People enjoying reading about the real stories behind Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, etc. (not to compare Kevin Mitnick to any of them) and if Mitnick had made the story more personal I would have enjoyed it more. Instead we get teases of his past, such the time he and a friend earned $300 at a tradeshow by getting around the security of a new security product. I would want to see more of that.

By reading this book you will learn that people can be gullible and they can be stupid; they can be helpful and they can be duped – and that someone can take advantage of that.

Well duh.

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In Prey author Michael Crichton moves away from the huge dinosaurs of Jurassic Park or the large primates of Congo to take us into the relatively new science of nanotechnology, which to a layman means real, real, real small stuff. You may have heard about scientists making microscopic robots that would be at our beck and call? This novel is about what happens when they swarm together and develop a “hive mind.”

The novel is rooted in real science and Crichton starts off the book by trying to hammer that point home. I was a bit put off by what I perceived to be a little lecturing from Crichton on how we were going to destroy humanity if we weren’t careful with science, but I do think it established a strong start to the book.

Prey centers around unemployed protagonist Jack Forman and his quest to verify if his concerns are real and his wife is having an affair at her job at super-secret research facility Xymos Technology. It turns out there is a whole lot else going on. Luckily for Crichton it turns out that Xymos is using technology that Jack wrote when he was employed, and they now need his help to fix a problem. That allows Crichton to bring Jack into the secret world of nanotechnology research.

Like most Crichton books the pace is quick and the read is quicker. There isn’t much character development and everything gets tied together very neatly. In order to enjoy this book more thoroughly you will need to be able to suspend your disbelief about both the unlikelihood of some of the science and some of the plot devices Crichton has employed to make the story work.

All in all a satisfying read and I will go to the movie when there is surely one made.

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Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live offers an impressive array of viewpoints into the inner workings of arguably the most influential television show of the last 30 years.

Written as a series of remembrances from cast, writers and guests the book covers nearly 28 years of Saturday Night Live history in small bite-sized chunks, which at times is annoying but overall adds to the ease in which the book can be digested.

In fact, I read a few chapters while watching old re-runs of SNL and found that it really added to my enjoyment of the book.

I was particularly interested in learning a little about the relationship between the writers and the cast, especially when some were both. There were a number of great stories from the likes of Al Franken, Tom Davis, Rosie Shuster and many more.

While the book is titled “uncensored” there really isn’t much here that crosses over the line. Certainly anyone familiar with SNL would not be surprised by much of what is written, although I must say the image of Chris Farley sticking a pool cue up his butt and then licking it just to get a laugh at a party was more than I needed to know.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone interested in learning a little more about the history of Saturday Night Live.

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