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Week of October 1, 2002 |
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BINION'S HORSESHOE CASINO
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LAS VEGAS - The best gamblers have always
come from three places--Texas, New York and London--and twenty
years ago a pleasant series of coincidences brought all three of
these eccentric groups together at the World Series of Poker.
The result was a book that really explained poker to the
world at large for the first time. Al Alvarez, the British poet
and literary critic, spent four weeks in the exotic world of
Binion's Horseshoe Casino, interviewing the great players he had
only read about, trying to get to the essence of the game he
loved, and "The Biggest Game in Town" (Chronicle, $15.95, 188
pp.) is the happy result. It's probably the best book ever
written about the strange subculture of professional poker at the
highest levels, and it's become so famous among patrons of the
game that it's being reissued for a new generation.
Alvarez was actually inspired to go the World Series of
Poker by another book, the self-published "Super/System," edited
by Doyle Brunson, a technical work which explains all the various
poker games through the eyes of the top players. It was regarded
in the seventies as a betrayal of the poker fraternity. Brunson,
a world champion Hold 'Em player from Texas, essentially gave
away everyone's secrets, and the game has never been the same
since.
Alvarez perfectly captures the poker world in the transition
year of 1981, when it was still dominated by Texans like Johnny
Moss, Amarillo Slim Preston, Puggy Pearson, Crandall Addington,
and the Jewish contingent of Stu Ungar, Perry Green, and Jay
Heimowitz from the Catskills. (For the record, Ungar beat Green
at the final table.) As usual, the pros made "Texans against
Jews" side bets, and it was one of the last years when the
tournament would revolve around such a simple geographic and
ethnic rivalry.
Up until that year, Binion's Horseshoe was a place where all
the poker players from around the world came to play against the
"big boys" and see just how good they were--and the big boys in
residence were happy to take their money. Alvarez' book changed
all that. He popularized "Super/System," for one thing, so today
every quality player has read and studied it, especially
Brunson's own long section on how to play Hold 'Em. Add to that
the use of computers and the heavy influx of Asian players, and
the old cowboy-hatted seat-of-their-pants players seem almost as
quaint as the guys who learned to make a living playing gin rummy
at Catskills resorts. The old Texas and the old New York are both
gone, but it's nice to have this chronicle of a wide-eyed
Londoner who catches the essence of Vegas just a few years before
it became a theme park.
Even though the World Series of Poker is still the biggest
event of its kind in the world, even that's changed. Jack Binion,
son of Horseshoe founder Benny Binion, has established a
tournament almost as large at his Horseshoe Casino in Tunica,
Mississippi, and Lyle Berman, chairman of Lakes Gaming, recently
announced the creation of a World Poker Tour that will kick off
at Bellagio and hit several casinos around the country,
ultimately offering more money to the players who can bankroll
that lifestyle.
Nevertheless, poker players still flock to Binion's in Vegas
every May for the World Series, and first-timers are inevitably
shocked to see how rundown the place is. This dark CAVE with the
shabby carpet and the worn felt is the world capital of poker?
Yes it is. It may be the most unprepossessing poker room in the
world, but poker players have never liked fancy things anyway. It
looks, in fact, much as it looked in 1981 when Alvarez discovered
it and explained its mysteries to the world.
Go there at your own risk. It still eats people alive.
* © Copyright 2002 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs |