Las Vegas, the morning of September 17th 1998, and Ted Binion, a wasted looking 55-year old multi-millionaire and former casino owner, lies face up on the carpet with Sandra Murphy, his pretty 26-year-old girlfriend and former pole dancer on top of him.

Ted’s into life’s sleazy pleasures, so it’s not too unusual to find he’s handcuffed and a lot of heroin, sleeping pills, and booze are in his bloodstream. But Sandra isn’t astride him; she’s kneeling right on his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs, slowly suffocating him.

They aren’t alone. Sandra’s got her own lover with her, an inept businessman and small-time gangster called Rick Tabish. An hour or two earlier, they’d held Ted at gunpoint and forced him to swallow an overdose of heroin and a load of sleeping pills. Frustrated by the time it’s taking for Binion to die, Tabish kneels down and clamps his palms across Ted’s mouth, and nose. Ted Binion fights for breath, writhes around on the carpet, strains against the handcuffs, tries to bite Tabish. It’s futile. He’s unfit, Murphy and Tabish are strong, and he dies within a few minutes…

***

So begins Positively Fifth Street - Jim McManus’ book of murder and the 2000 World Series of Poker.

The story is simple. McManus, a writer and university teacher is on summer break. With time to spare, he picks up a freelance assignment from a magazine. The job is real mixture; do a piece on female poker players at the World Series of Poker, write about the ways computers and poker manuals have changed the game, report on the WSOP itself, and keep an eye on the closing stages of the Ted Binion murder trail.

Murphy and Tabish tried to make Ted Binion’s death look like suicide. With some unwitting help from a shockingly amateurish Las Vegas Police Department and Pathology lab (C.S.I they are not!) it looked as if they might succeed. But suspicions grew, and in March 1999 the pair were arrested for murder. After preliminary hearings, the trial started in March 2000 and will be over during the WSOP in May.

The challenge for the Jim McManus is how to weave all these elements together without his book becoming hopelessly disjointed. Against the odds he succeeds brilliantly, and he does it by gambling – the magazine gives him a few thousand dollars as an advance and for expenses, but he uses the money to play a satellite for the tournament he’s supposed to cover. An amazing run of hands helps him to win a seat, but he has to cut a deal with the second and third place players. This means he’s tapped out, but does have time to work on the assignment.

The result is the best general survey of poker ever written. In one chapter we get a good review of the poker literature, including Al Averez’s The Biggest Game in Town, and Tony Holden’s Big Deal. In another the corpse of our martyred saint Stuart Unger is once again dissected and subjected to moral analysis. The Binion saga is told, with an added emphasis on the life of murder victim Ted. Then, there are developments in computer software (Wilson) and game theory as applied to poker and real life. Hanging around the WSOP, he discovers that female poker players are still quite rare, so he interviews the usual suspects. Among them Melissa Hayden, Annie Duke, and Kathy Kolberg all have plenty of charm and plenty to say, but he also records their other qualities; the way they can take advantage of male opponents, and he sees a very dubious bit of angle shooting by Annie Duke.

It’s all written and explained in a smooth readable way - even the most unpromising material has interest and entertainment, the photographs, charts, and diagrams help as well. Bubbling away in the background are details from the trial and McManus’ own hopes and fears about “the big one” now just a day or two away. Sadly, his wife Jennifer isn’t much help. Left back home near Chicago with the children, she disapproves of his poker, is dubious about the entire assignment, and isn’t afraid to say so over the phone. Time and again Jim tells us how much he loves his Jennifer and what she means to him. Shame she comes over as being such a control freak.

Finally, we get to the Main Event itself. No author has ever managed to survive more than a day or two of this trial, and McManus is a touching mixture of false confidence and real doubt as he takes his place amongst the record-breaking field of 512 players.

Yes, 512.

A reminder of how far poker has come in the past five years. In 2004 thanks mainly to the Internet, the field was 2576. Despite being published in 2003, Positively Fifth Street already has a slightly dated feel. But the book goes into a different gear once we sit behind Jim and his $10,000 and start to play a few hands with him. For most Gutshot readers, this will produce feelings of amusement, frustration, and sheer disbelief. Why? Because Jennifer is right - Jim McManus is a dreadful player! Weak/tight when he should be bold, loose as a goose when he should be throwing hands away, most often a passive calling station – he’s dire. No surprise that he’s lost nearly $8,800 by the first interval and stares elimination in the face.

No way. Using the interval to regroup, he phones Jennifer and the kids for inspiration, settles down, plays tight/aggressive, and starts to hit some hands. By nightfall trip jacks filling to a full house means his stack is up to $35,325 and he’s 41st out of 214 players left. And so it continues, his style of play degenerates into flat-calling raises and getting lucky, but it makes him impossible to read, and perhaps causes some opponents to tilt. It’s a vivid story of an amazing run, and he goes longer and further into the tournament than anyone expects, including himself, and us.

Poker can be an escape from reality, and in all the excitement it’s a relief to get away from the nasty and pathetic lives of Ted Binion, Rick Tabish, and Sandra Murphy, the pretty psychopath that slept with them both. Tabish does provide the joke of the book, when he’s interviewed by another journalist and demands to know “Do I look stupid?” The journalist wisely bites his tongue.

Jim McManus has a real talent for writing and in 2000 had tremendous luck. Positively Fifth Street is one of the best poker books ever written. You can find it on the Internet and in some of the bigger London bookshops.

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