Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Latest Hemingway column from Star's archives finds the great man reporting on the arrival of craps in Toronto society. If you've ever walked past a casino table and wondered what the hell was going on, now's your chance to find out
Four times world poker champion. Talk-show favourite. Friend of presidents. So thin he looked like "the advance man for a famine". Could "talk the nuts off a motorcycle". Sold his memoirs to Hollywood. Then came the scandal
World champion poker player. "Nor were his talents confined to the card table. He once reputedly relieved a drug dealer of $50,000 in the jail cell they were sharing by betting on which of five lumps of sugar a fly would land"
Hanging out with the actor, poker player. Known as the "Unabombshell". Wears low-cut tops. Poker players don't care. "Nothing looks better to them than a pair of aces. They’re not looking at your pair. They’re looking at their pair"
Memoir of growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the "loose buckle on the Bible Belt". Local industries: Gambling and horse racing. "Wide-open town" where "a dishonest man could make an honest living" and mobsters could relax
Last year, an ex-jockey with superior negotiating skills and a mind for maths took three casinos in Atlantic City for $15m. And it wasn't by cheating, any other dubious activity or merely by striking it lucky. Here's how he did it
Foxwoods Casino covers an area of 6.7 million square feet. It has a staggering 6,300 slot machines, and 10,000 employees. When it launched, it was a goldmine for the Pequot Tribe. But now it's crumbling under $2.3bn of debt
"In the poker world, April 15 is known as Black Friday. That's the day the US Department of Justice seized the assets and shut down the biggest firms serving the American market charging them with bank fraud and money laundering"
Ignore the off-putting title. Thoroughly entertaining story of journalist entering World Series of Poker. Sports writing at its best. Starts off with the immortal line: "I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside"
Novelist gets down to practice before playing in World Series of Poker (part two). "Like most people, I'd spent my whole life looking for a socially acceptable situation in which I could wear sunglasses indoors, and here it was"
Novelist "bowing and half-broken under his psychic burdens" gets paid-for seat at World Series of Poker. Feeling unqualified, he decides to get in some practice first. Takes Greyhound to Atlantic City. Sits down to play
Why Indians will soon dominate world poker. They don't drink, they're great at maths, and the game is catching on. "We are on the cusp of something big. The poker scene in India is akin to the scene in Macau three years ago"
