Novels

Biggest Game in Town

Probably the most famous book about big-time poker, A. Alvarez's Biggest Game takes you back into the first years of tournament poker. Set around the World Series Of Poker in the early '80s, Alvarez wrote at length about the people and places that make up the poker world back then.

Probably the best part about the book is that it's not quite as 'linear' as most other books. Alvarez doesn't go from chapter-to-chapter describing the rounds of the tournament, nor does he even go through in an real discernable order. This is a collection of stories and events throughout the early part of the poker days that have become legend today.

When I read this book, I wanted to actually see these poker events take place. I have since seen videos of the old World Series tapes you could by in the Horseshoe gift shop, but none of them do the job that this book does in depicting the glory days of Doyle Brunson and the gang. If you really want to 'see' what it was like back then, this book is as close as you will get.

Alvarez writes on a level that is perceivable by the novice poker player, and also writes from a fairly independent viewpoint. That is, Alvarez was a poker player himself, but unlike players like Phil Hellmuth and the likes, he has no vested interest in the business of poker, therefore, he writes very openly and honestly and the people and places around him.

His observations of the opening events of the 1981 World Series Of Poker, leading up to the conclusion of Stu Ungar's championship, are definitely the best passages ever written about poker. The entire time, I felt like I was immersed in the smoke-filled poker rooms of the early '80s, and that I was actually watching Ungar take down his second title in a row.

I've read a lot of books that have tried to emulate this book, but no one has come close. If you're looking for a true classic about the game of poker, then Alvarez wrote this one just for you. Any true poker fan should try and pick up a copy of this and read it at one point.

Review by Jon Eaton

Cincinnati Kid

Just to confuse matters, there's two new Steve McQueen box sets available, one from MGM featuring the previously issued DVD's of The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven and Junior Bonner with a new Special Edition of The Thomas Crown Affair, and the other from Warner Home Video with a new special edition of The Getaway and new to DVD issues of Tom Horn and, at long last, The Cincinnati Kid, regarded in many quarters as the finest poker movie ever made.

If one is only interested in the poker movie, it is available singly, at long last. To answer the question "why did it take so long to get this out on DVD'" we need to remember that with corporate sales and shifts over the years, there's a fair amount of consolidation of back catalogues, which means that Warner owns most of the old MGM films. Since The Cincinnati Kid is a fairly cultish item, and in terms of broader sales, doesn't quite have the marketable pizzazz of, say, Singin' In The Rain, it took Warner a while to get to it.

The transfer is very good, and in its original widescreen aspect ratio, so we can finally dump our old pan and scan VHS tapes. As extras, the DVD offers an alarmingly dull commentary from director Norman Jewison, and a fitfully amusing commentary from the Celebrity Poker Showdown team of ex-Tiltboy Phil Gordon and comedian Dave Foley. Gordon offers some interesting insights into the world of big stakes poker and player psychology, even though he sort of chokes while defending the madly improbable final hand. There's also a little nifty period featurette about the film's card consultant teaching Joan Blondell how to deal in the big game.

So how does The Cincinnati Kid hold up forty years down the road'

According to Jewison, parachuted in after Sam Peckinpah had been shooting for two weeks, he found Ring Lardner's adaptation of the Richard Jessup novel to be "turgid." Not having ever seen that script, we can't judge Jewison's assessment. We can say that the film is considerably softer than the novel a terse piece of hard-boiled existential fiction with debts to Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett.

One sees this particularly in the way the film treats the principal female characters - the soft lit lyricism of the scenes where The Kid follows Christian (Tuesday Weld) home to her family farm have no equivalent in the novel, and casting Ann-Margaret as the bad girl temptress is vaguely bizarre (Ann-Margaret may have looked hotter than Georgia asphalt, but she always had to strain to play bad girls - she just seemed like a nice girl in a sexy package, as if her jaw-dropping physical presence was a form of dress-up).

The poker scenes, though... Steve McQueen remains the guy every poker player wants to be when he sits down at the table (Matt Damon notwithstanding), the essence of cool. And when he takes that hellacious beat at the end of the movie, one only wishes that any number of tournament pros would choose to emulate his icy emotional control. You don't hear him berating Lancey for misplaying his hand (let's face it, he does misplay that final hand, badly).

Tony Holden in Big Deal has delineated what's wrong with the final scene of Cncinnati Kid in excruciating detail, its mathematical improbability, the way it misplays the film's own themes (Lancey's the man because he improbably outdrew the kid at the river' How does that make him "The Man'").

And, as Phil Gordon notes in the commentary, even though Karl Malden's Shooter announces "no string bets" before the game starts, there's at least two old school string raises in the final game - I call your five hundred... and raise you two' thousand"

The atmosphere in the film is tremendous, even if the period detailing is vague. It's supposed to be Depression New Orleans, but don't study the wardrobe two closely. The performances, most notably of McQueen and Edward G. Robinson in particular, but also Rip Torn as the film's villain, are superb. And who can forget Robinson looking at Torn and telling him "What you paid is the looking price. Lessons are extra."

A very worthwhile issue that should be in any poker player's movie collection, though so old-fashioned, with its emphasis on five card stud, that it was a period piece forty years ago. I'd rank it slightly lower than Rounders as a poker film and slightly behind The Hustler in the "gambling as existential quest" genre.

Review by John Harkness

Diary of a Mad Poker Player

Diary of a Mad Poker Player: A Journey to the World Series of Poker by Richard Sparks. It's a sign of the times that someone thought Diary of a Mad Poker Player was worth publishing. It's not a bad book, but five years ago, one can just hear the publisher: "So, the guy goes to the World Series to win a seat, and then doesn't' Well, where's the hook'" Apparently, in the era of the poker boom, we don't need the hook.

Which hasn't stopped the publishers from some clever ploys in the book's packaging. At no point on the cover of the book will you find any indication that Sparks didn't play in the Main Event at the Series, or any event at the series.

So when he fails in his dream to be the next Chris Moneymaker, he decides to become the next A. Alvarez. The Biggest Game In Town casts an awfully long shadow over this book, as it does over everyone who writes the tourist version of World Series trip report. He's not nearly as elegant a prose stylist as Alvarez, but then again, who is'

Okay, so Richard Sparks isn't playing in the big one, and he's a self-acknowledged non-great of the game. What's he gonna give us that we can't get elsewhere' A lot of ruminations on the possibilities of online cheating. Indeed, an excercise in cheating at the play money tables at Party, and then some interviews with a Paradise rep, Mike Sexton of Party, and PokerStars head of marketing, Dan Goldman. The interviews discuss onlin cheating as well as other topics.

Which of these are informative' Sexton has a great golf story about playing Brunson on what he calls the biggest golf bet in history, Goldman talks about the impact of the Series win on Moneymaker, and says that Sparks is welcome to try cheating at the real money tables at 'Stars.

There's also a very good interview with Sammy Farha, the best I've seen, where he talks about how he picked the heads-up phase of the WSOP main event to play very badly, even worse than Moneymaker. It's a slightly negative viewpoint of Farha, but they give him a little praise as well. It's still one of the most interesting "inside the mind" of a great player pieces I've encountered, and kudos to Sparks for that. It's the best chapter in this book which is otherwise rather thin on insight into anything but the self-recriminations of a mediocre player. And, let's be honest, we all know exactly what that sounds like--it's the voice inside our own heads.

Oh, and the title is inaccurate. Frustrated player, perhaps. Self-loathing player, definitely. Not a lot of sales value in those titles, though.

I recommended this book if you must have every poker title published, otherwise, there's more important and interesting books to read before you get to this one.

Review of John Harkness

High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story

After a long delay, High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story is finally seeing domestic release. The film was extremely successful at the major film festivals and has been eyed by poker players for a while, but had yet to pick up distribution throughout the US.

Finally, New Line Cinema picked up the project and has put it on the Starz movie network, with the DVD version hitting shelves on March 15th. I recently had a chance to view the movie, which was a relief since I had been waiting for over a year to see it!

Michael Imperioli, of The Sopranos fame, stars as Stu Ungar. Imperioli transforms himself into Ungar very well. While he is not a spitting-image replacement for Ungar, he pulls of the part perfectly.

The story, which was written, directed and produced by A. W. Vidmer, is accurate enough that I consider it the only true biographical information on Ungar's life available. Vidmer takes us from his childhood days on the streets of New York to Stuey's troubled days in Las Vegas.

Others notably appearing are Vince Van Patten, Pat Morita, and the late Andy Glazer. Renee Faia, with a very limited acting resum', plays Ungar's wife Angela.

The film focuses more on Ungar's life than Poker. If you're sitting down to watch this movie with the mind set that you're going to watch a sequel to Rounders, then you will be disappointed.

However, if you're really interested in seeing a glimpse at the all-too-short life of one of the greatest poker players (and all-around card players) of our time, then this film is a definite hit.

One of the best aspects of High Roller is that it was painstakingly made with the intent to be accurate. I remember reading a Q&A with the filmmaker Vidmer about the process to write the script and it was very involved, even with some notes from his family.

One of the scenes I remember vividly was the final hand of his first World Series victory in 1980. I had to think to myself who he was playing heads up, because the actor they chose to portray Doyle Brunson was far from a Doyle-look-alike. Once I figured that out, I remembered the way the hand went down, and it was perfectly accurate. I appreciated the little details that they really strived to get down.

The lows of this film are few and far between, but there are obvious scenes of somewhat torturous dialogue from the less-experienced actors. The most noticeable are with Stu's childhood actor, and late in the film I had a hard time buying the father-daughter interaction. But with this being Vidmer's first major film and most of these actors not being A-list, there's little to complain about.

This film is extremely turbulent, much like Stu's life. You see Imperioli go from a wide-eyed 20-year-old to a down-and-out Vegas junkie. It's a rough ride at times and really tears at you to see such an amazing individual with the high-level of intellect that Ungar possessed go straight down the drain.

However, that's how it happened, and it's one of the best films about poker or poker players you'll see. I highly recommend this film to anyone with any interest in Stu Ungar's life.

Review by Jon Eaton