Positively Fifth Street

March 7, 2004

I polished off Positively Fifth Street this weekend. It was fair, but not really great. Covering the World Series of Poker for Harper’s, James McManus originally planned on weaving a tale about the rise of women in the World Series at Binion’s Horsehoe with the seedy murder case of Ted Binion that was going down at about the same time. Something funny happened on the way to the story though, and McManus finds himself playing further and longer in the World Series than the people he planned on covering, all the way until the final table and placing him in the top six poker players in the whole world.

It’s a great story, and when McManus is focused on his incredible run, the book is terrific. He breaks down hands card by card and readily admits to his numerous mistakes on his miraculous trip. In certain ways, it does take a bit of mystique from the game, as McManus’ self-effacing narration makes it seem like he lucked into almost all of his winning hands. Even still, the longshot, underdog storyline writes itself and it’s by far the best part of the book.

The problems I had with the book were with all the surrounding stuff. All the bits about the other players are solid, but it all suffers a bit since the author is too busy playing poker for himself. He covers a lot of back story, but there’s not a whole lotta info about Annie Duke powering through to 10th place … while EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT. While that’s a little problematic, the bits about the Ted Binion murder are almost completely superfluous. I felt like they were supposed to add color, but there’s not much interplay between this thread and the other. Instead it’s just kind of tacked on.

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