"Positively Fifth Street" Review

Page	Title	Chapter
3	The End	1
21	Dead Money	2
35	Family, Career, Even Life	3
69	Black Magic	4
87	Urge Overkill	5
107	The Poker of Science	6
125	Nobody Said Anything	7
149	Chicks With Decks	8
185	Death in the Afternoon	9
207	Book-Learned	10
222	On the Bubble	11
249	Song for Two Jims	12
269	Tension-Discharge	13
311	The Last Supper	14
337	Either Way	15
355	Zombies Is Bawth of 'Em	16
369	Tons and Tons of Luck	17
387	Afterword: A Gray Aria
403	Poker Terminology
413	Bibliography
419	Acknowledgments
421	Index

Lots of poker players dream about playing in the World Series of Poker Main Event. Many poker-playing authors dream about writing about their experience in doing it. And a few lucky ones have managed to get paid to do it. Unfortunately, almost without exception, most of these books are filled with the lead-up to the event -- the poker training (cue the Rocky music), the warm-up events, the obligatory airplane landing in Las Vegas, sometimes even a satellite event to qualify for the big one -- because their stay in the Main Event doesn't last long enough to fill more than a brief chapter or two.

Positively Fifth Street is the sole, notable exception. It has a great writeup of the 2000 WSOP Main Event because James McManus managed to last long enough to give a personal account of most of it.¹

Harper's magazine actually sent him to Vegas to cover several other stories:

Women at the World Series of Poker.
The impact of the growing crop of advice books and computer programs on poker.
The death of Ted Binion.

But this isn't a murder mystery. McManus begins his book by giving a hypothetical, R-rated ² account of how Binion's girlfriend Sandy Murphy and her new boyfriend Rick Tabish murdered him for a stash of silver and other valuables. Fascinating, but its only connection to poker is that Binion's family owns Binion's Horseshoe, where the World Series of Poker takes place. Ted had helped to run the business for a couple of decades but had been banned in 1996, over two years earlier, because of his persistent heroin abuse.

While that sounds more exciting than poker, the rest of the story about how they almost got away with it but were later put on trial begins to drag a little. But that's when the poker part of the book picks up.

McManus gives a short history of poker, including the invention of playing cards, the Wild West, Wild Bill Hickok, and Las Vegas. He lays out the tale of Nick Dandolos and Johnny Moss's supposed marathon poker match³ and gives a biography of Benny Binion, Ted's father. He discusses the top women in poker since 2000.

After some last-minute strategy advice from a T.J. Cloutier book and a lamentation of the corners Becky Behnen has cut with the World Series of Poker, the 2000 WSOP Main Event finally begins in Chapter 9 with a few hand recaps from Day 1. The meat of the Main Event with many more hand descriptions runs from Chapters 11 to 14, continuing through the end of the tournament.

Conclusion

Positively Fifth Street has two suspenseful threads. For the poker player, McManus's World Series of Poker run leaves the reader wondering how far he can go. For everyone else, the sordid story of murder and the theft of millions of dollars appeals to the baser, more primal urges. The question remains whether Murphy and Tabish will be convicted and on what charges.

P. 23: Says, "even in regular poker tournaments nineteen out of twenty entrants lose their entire buy-in", which may have been true, but it implies that it's worse at the WSOP. The WSOP Main Event paid between 6% and 26% of the field from 1978 to 2000, including 7.7% in 1998 and 9.2% in 1999.
P. 49: Says, "The other $30,000 was divided between the two runners-up", but it was winner-take-all. McManus was confused because the buyin was only $5,000, not $10,000.
P. 59: Misspells Kathy Kohlberg's name as "Kolberg".
P. 63-64: McManus says he has 10-to-1 pot odds to call, but there's at most 1,250 in the pot if both blinds folded, making it about 4-to-1 (after a preflop raise to 200, three players call, including McManus, then on the flop, someone bets 300 and one player calls).
P. 65-66: Says "the fourth [King] having been counted among the diamonds", but he meant the second Queen, which would make both a flush and a straight. Habib has the King of diamonds in his hand.
P. 118: Incorrectly puts the odds of hitting a royal flush when drawing four to an A♦ as 650,000-to-1. The odds of being dealt a royal flush in five cards are 1-in-649,740 (52 choose 5 divided by 4), but his drawing odds were 1-in-178,365 (47 choose 4).
P. 164: Says Jerri and her husband Harry Thomas became the second couple to both have a bracelet after Dr. Max and Maria Stern, but they were actually the third or fourth depending on whether or not you count the 1984 Employee tournament as an official bracelet event. This is the complete list of husband and wife bracelet winners (only first bracelets listed):
- 1983: Donna and Jim Doman (1983 $800 Mixed Doubles)
- 1989: Sandy (1984 $1,000 Special Casino Operators event [recognized by the WSOP but not the Hendon Mob Database as a bracelet event; only 14 players, and she won a trophy not a bracelet]) and Bob Stupak ($5,000 1989 Deuce-to-Seven Lowball)
- 1997: Maria (1997 $1,500 Seven-Card Stud) and Max Stern (1995 $1,500 Omaha 8 or Better)
- 2000: Jerri (2000 $1,500 Seven-Card Stud) and Harry Thomas (1985 $5,000 Seven-Card Stud)
- 2012: Allyn (2012 $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold 'Em Championship) and Barry Shulman (2001 $1,500 Seven-Card Stud Hi-Lo)
P. 173: Says he had 14 outs (7 outs twice) to win by hitting a full house if Hale has a straight, but it's 7 outs on the turn and 10 outs on the river, since the turn card can pair.
P. 241-242: Says either the 8♦ or 9♦ would fill him up, but at least one of those hit the board on the flop, which had and eight and a nine with two diamonds.
P. 232: Places Amarillo Slim Preston's story about slitting his throat if Vera Richmond won the Main Event in 1973, but no women played the Main Event until Barbara Freer in 1978.
P. 302: Although announcer Bob Thompson may have been quoted correctly, it should have been noted that Barbara Enright place fifth in the 1995 Main Event, not sixth in the 1996 Main Event.

Title	Positively Fifth Street
Author	James McManus
Year	2003
Skill Level	any
Pros	Very well written account of the author's journey to and through the 2000 WSOP Main Event.
Cons	About half the book has little to do with poker and may not be interesting if you aren't into sensational murders.
Rating	4.0

Poker Omnibus W50P