Positively Fifth Street |
Authors: James McManus Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Pages: 416 Pub. Date: 2003 Price: $18.98 |
Book Review: Part 2
But of course there’s the Sandy Murphy/Rick Tabish trial unfolding just down the street at the Clark County Courthouse, replete with tales of the scion Ted Binion’s hard-partying, drugs-and-alcohol life, and Murphy’s emergence in McManus’s tale as the evil golddigger for whom even murder was part of the game. Back and forth the story hops: McManus gets bounced from the WSOP’s media event by “Oklahoma Johnny” Hale, while testimony in the Binion trial brings out ever more sordid details, including Binion’s secret buried silver stash, seemingly dug up and removed by Murphy and Tabish.
Eventually the Main Event arrives, and McManus’s own unlikely march to the six-player final gets underway. McManus eventually finished fifth here, cashing for well over $200,000, but the true poker tale is in the journey. Famed tourney veteran TJ Cloutier emerges as McManus’s chief antagonist, though in a friendly, competitive way, made all the more ironic by McManus constantly reiterating that it was one of Cloutier’s strategy books that McManus cites as a key to his own deep run. Of course, this is the Main Event that Cloutier should have won, with a heads-up bad beat to Chris Ferguson ending the matter. Ferguson emerges as that player of the 2000 WSOP who fortune smiled upon, with good luck and formidable skill finally proving an unbeatable combination.
But it’s McManus’s own deep run and befriending of WSOP staffers that gives him access to Becky Binion, who was in 2000 the owner of the Horseshoe and the WSOP. Binion wrested control of the casino for several years from her brother Jack Binion, while Ted, the third sibling, ran afoul of Nevada gaming officials due in part to his hard-partying lifestyle. The distance of an elapsed decade lets us see this period as the “Becky Years”, a stretch when the WSOP grew exponentially only because poker was itself in a period of hot growth. The WSOP itself almost folded in 2004 amid these ownership turmoils, despite the series’ growth and success. The Binion family wars, though, were very much a part of the 2000 Series, and McManus’s own deep run gave him access to another part of the story. In succeeding on poker’s biggest stage, McManus become part of poker’s extended family, and therefore privy to more of the tale of the tales. Fresh off his final-table experience, McManus receives a call from Binion that the verdict is about to be announced, and off to the courthouse he rushes.
Positively Fifth Street is both tale and teller, mixed up and merged in the social blender that describes both Las Vegas and the WSOP. It’s a random, unlikely story, perhaps the biggest part of why it’s so very special. McManus himself describes it as his favorite book in the writing, and that joy comes through to the reader, page after page. No one that enjoys poker or the poker world dares pass this one by – it is indeed a “must read” in every sense of the term.
