Cowboys Full — The Story of Poker

Acclaimed novelist, poet, academic, and poker player James McManus is back with what is undoubtedly the most definitive account of poker and card playing yet committed to paper.

Cowboys Full – The Story of Poker is indeed the story of poker. It will be cherished by aficionados and laymen alike, and its exhaustive research and clear historical analysis will thrill fans of the game for years to come.

The author of the much-loved Positively Fifth Street, a groundbreaking book about his own journey to fifth place at the World Series of Poker main event in 2000, has painstakingly pulled together all the disparate threads of the game; from the development of playing cards through to the codification of modern poker to the present day Internet boom in an eminently readable study on how poker has helped shape the world.

Indeed, early in the book McManus states his “…goal is to show how the story of poker helps to explain who we are.”

Not unpredictably this accomplished writer, who has penned articles for the likes of The New York Times, The Economist, and The New Yorker, does so with a knowing eye to the colour, characters, and, of course, cowboys of the game.

Seamlessly blending fastidious historical research with analytical observation and a sophisticated sense of humour, McManus manages to effortlessly contextualise poker through history with reference to religion, militarism, diplomacy, law, business, education, mathematics, economics, and technology.

If that somehow makes it sound like it might not be a page-turner, think again.

The cast of characters alone reads like a history of the last millennium writ small over the felt, and includes Eisenhower, Nixon, Truman, Roosevelt, Johnson, Grant, Hoover, Clinton, Obama, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Goethe, Moliere, Shakespeare, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry VIII, Joan of Arc, Casanova, Einstein, Crockett, Holliday, Hickock, Churchill, Goebbels, Hitler, Binion, Ahmadinejad, Garbo, Garrett, and Gobachev.

And all of that before we get to the players who are the media darlings of today.

Taking as its starting point the notion first posited by the New York Times in 1875 that, “The national game is not base-ball but poker” the book begins its journey through the story of poker with the invention of playing cards.

Anthropoligist Stuart Culin traced their development back to Korean divinatory arrows which were eventually miniaturised in the six century to strips of oiled silk — the first playing cards.

The invention of paper and portable money, and the growth of the silk route hastened their internationalisation and popularity.

A second boom occurred after the dark ages in Europe in the 1300s as people began to live longer, knew more, and had leisure time to play.

In Rouen, France by the late 1400s, suits had generally been settled upon in a way we recognise today; hearts representing the church, diamonds the merchant class, spades the state, and clubs signifying farmers.

In 1564 Milanese physician and mathematician Griolamo Cardano — Dr. Jerome Cardplayer as McManus playfully translates — invented a way to combine probabilities, laying the groundwork not only for modern algebra and financial analysis but for the basic poker odds we all know and take for granted today.

The game of Primiera was simplified by the French into Poque (pronounced Pok-uh) and is now regarded as the most direct antecedent of the modern game.

By the early 1800s the French had taken control of New Orleans, Louisiana and in this cultural melting pot of English, Spanish, French, and new American the modern game of poker was born and spread like wildfire on the steamboat routes out of the Creole capital.

McManus astutely describes the Mississippi steamboats as the Internet poker rooms of their day.

From there things pick up a head of steam (literally) like a prototype information superhighway — the wild west years where lawlessness and chicanery threatened to destroy the game through the wars of the late 19th and early 20th century which saw poker language and concepts permeate mainstream language.

Dancing like Spider in Goodfellas through the road gambling years to the dusty neon oasis of Las Vegas and Benny Binion’s visionary development of the World Series of Poker, to the “perfect storm” of the year poker went “boom” in 2003, the book fetches up at the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, the online poker cheating scandals, and ultimately the mainstream globalisation of the game.

Cowboys Full — The Story of Poker delights and informs in equal measure and it will surely be a long time before we see such a comprehensive book on card playing and players.

Card Player caught up with author James McManus to discuss his new book and his take on poker past and present.

Brendan Murray: What inspired you to write this book?

James McManus: While writing Positively Fifth Street, I researched the history of poker and was surprised to discover that, while historical events were described in a wide variety of books and articles, there was no single book that covered the complete story of the most popular card game on the planet. I decided to try and write it myself.

BM: Of all the facts and stories you uncovered during your research, which surprised or delighted you the most?

JMcM: The extent to which poker logic was deployed by the leaders of countries with nuclear weapons to help them figure out when and how to bluff, as well as which adversaries are or aren’t bluffing: from the war between the US and Japan, through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, to the standoffs today with Iran and North Korea. The highest stakes action we can imagine between Andy Beal and the Corporation are laughably minuscule compared to what’s at stake between, say, Israel and Iran. Yet a similar logic prevails in both kinds of contest.

BM: There were many pivotal points in the development of poker — the invention of playing cards, the growth of the game on the Mississippi steamboats, Vegas and the WSOP, the Internet… Which do you think was the most important?

JMcM: They’re all important. Without playing cards, no vying games, and specifically poker, would have ever evolved in New Orleans. Without the riverboats, the action would have stayed in New Orleans for quite a bit longer. Without televised tournaments such as the WSOP and its imitators, games like no-limit hold’em wouldn’t have been discovered by the tens of millions of folks who play them today. (Speaking to a more literate audience, books such as Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town and Tony Holden’s Big Deal provided stylish introductions to tournament poker.) And since the Internet qualifier Chris Moneymaker won the main event in 2003, many millions more have decided they can become the world champion. Online poker provides easy access to games 24/7, including the highest stakes action around, no matter which country or time zone you live in. The downside (or upside for a growing number of players) is that, as more and more of the action takes place online, the ability to read physical tells, as well as the need to disguise them, has all but disappeared.

BM: Who do you think was the most important player of all time and for what reasons?

JMcM: No single player is the most important. Wild Bill Hickok was the face of poker for many decades, mainly because he was gunned down while playing. After a century and a half in which poker was accurately called the Cheater’s Game, Herbert O. Yardley’s The Education of a Poker Player became a bestseller in 1957, in part because of the strong case he made for playing on the square. Doyle Brunson is important because he’s been a winner for sixty years at a wide variety of styles — road games, tournaments, live action, online, as well as writing advice books and launching a site — which is why for most people he is now the face of poker. David Sklansky and Dan Harrington have taught millions of players how to think about poker decisions much more intelligently. Jennifer Harman and Annie Duke and Annette Obrestad are important for being among the first and most high-profile women to succeed at what was until recently a men’s-only game. I could go on…

BM: Given the impressive historical timeline presented in the book, where do you see poker in the future and do you think it will continue to have such a cultural cache?

JMcM: Poker has never been more popular than it is now, and I think it will continue to grow, especially online and in countries like China where it is only now being introduced. I think the new International Federation of Poker will help enormously in standardising the rules, keeping it legal in as many jurisdictions as possible, and encouraging people to see it as a skillful mind sport instead of a mindless gambling game.

Cowboys Full — The Story of Poker by James McManus is published in the UK and Ireland by Souvenir Press priced £14.99.