Search Results: Games Gambling Poker & Magic from Big Boy Rare Books

John C. Winston Company. 1943. Hardcover. very fine condition dustjacket is very fine not much wear; Tight binding clean pages very light age wear

Hardback with D/J in like new condition. Amazon In Poker Bets, Bluffs, and Bad Beats, journalist, poet and novelist Al Alvarez looks back on a lifetime's immersion in the business of playing cards for money, and quantifies the emotional and intellectual pot into which he and millions of other players past and present have been tossing their chips for nearly 200 years. For the past 40 years or more I have played poker regularly, once or twice a week, except when I am in Las Vegas, when I play all day every day for a couple of weeks on end. Poker changed my life, and sometimes I think it may even have saved it. From the card-sharps on the Mississippi steamboats, to the thrill-seeking octogenarians playing for $5 jackpots in corporate Las Vegas, Alvarez explores the history and mythology of the game, the legends and the also-rans, arguing that the legacy of poker is far greater than sum of its losers and winners. Alvarez gauges how far the language and underlying attitudes of the game have become… Read More