Your favorite book about gambling?

I recently read Diary Of A Mad Poker Player: A Journey To The World Series Of Poker, by Richard Sparks. I have to give it two thumbs up, it is very good. It's from 2005, so some of the hard information about online poker and online poker sites is dated, but the feeling is exactly where it should be. AND, since it is available for $1.33, + $3.99 shipping, even if you don't like it it won't break your bank.

Not a gambling book, but a fascinating biography and account of the times, is The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards by Jim Steinmeyer. Today we remember Houdini, but in the early quarter of the 20th century Thurston was the most famous magician in the world. I loved this one. It can be a little flat, but I forgive that for all the rest of the time that I was enthralled by it.

And my search for the links in the previous post led me to Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything. This one is only a few months old, and people seem to like it; I'm ordering it.

I find that most gambling books are like sports books, i.e. great potential but poorly written. If I had to pick just one from my bookshelf that I could keep, at the expense of all the others, it would be:

The Gambler's Companion
edited by George C Blakey

It's a great anthology of gambling stories from good writers.
Very entertaining and lots of historical interest.

Quote: DeMango

Any book written by Lyle Stuart.

End of discussion

Released:
No Work All Play

Press Release

Las Vegas, NV, November 14, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Roger Wagner announced today the release of No Work and All Play, Audacious Chronicles of a Casino Boss, published by Outskirts Press. A forty-five year veteran of the gaming and hotel management industry, Wagner offers a solid primer from the lowest to the highest levels of casino hospitality positions while also entertaining his readers with his anecdotes about the forgotten and the famous of this fascinating world.

It's a little dated, but mine is Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling - although mainly for the "esoteric" sections (things like carnival games, detecting cheats, and overseas gambling (although parts of it are now severely dated - for example, there hasn't been an "Irish Sweepstakes" since 1986); you know a book is old when Sic Bo is still called "Grand Hazard").

"The Boardwalk Jungle" by Ovid Demaris.

see ... boardwalkjungle

A look into the legal and political shenanigans in NJ when Casinos Came To Town.

A good read.

Guess it was an actual book. Read it for free on one of the Vegas sites, about the two guys who bought the Golden Nugget along with other investors (Andre Agassi, for one), and resold in maybe 2008 for a huge profit. Talk about perfect timing. Very entertaining.

Quote: dm

Guess it was an actual book. Read it for free on one of the Vegas sites, about the two guys who bought the Golden Nugget along with other investors (Andre Agassi, for one), and resold in maybe 2008 for a huge profit. Talk about perfect timing. Very entertaining.

Were these the guys who were the "stars" of the Fox "reality" series The Casino? (I put "reality" in quotes as it smacked of scripting; for example, some episodes began with video of somebody headed into Vegas, and the episode had something to do with trying to get that person to come to the GN, but if they didn't have the whole thing arranged in advance, then how did the video camera (and operator) get there in the first place? There was nothing new about this; Fox's series The Princes of Malibu, about Bruce Jenner's two sons (who were living with their mother and (I think) her new husband, and their attempts to make money, listed "day players" in the credits.)

Don't know about the show, but it happened. They bought the casino and sold about a year later and made $80 million or so. Not sure exactly. They had originally started maybe the first hotel room booking site and sold that at a big figure and then parlayed up to casino ownership.