Summary:
Positively Fifth Street by Jim McManus tells lots of stories. It's part poker book, part true-crime nonfiction and all entertaining. It's a fantastic read for poker and non-poker players alike.

Details or Sample:
Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker, written by Jim McManus, is more than a poker book although it covers the 2000 World Series of Poker in which the author took 4th place. It's more than a true crime book although it does deal extensively with the murder of Ted Binion and the trial of Sandra Murphy and Rick Tabish, both of whom were eventually convicted for this crime. Positively Fifth Street is part autobiography of the author's life and the love he has for the written word, his wife, Jennifer, his children and poker.

McManus was sent to Vegas to cover the 2000 World Series of Poker - and the growing trend of women in poker - as well as the murder trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, who had been indicted for 'burking' Ted Binion. Burking is a method of murder that involves simultaneously strangling a victim and compressing his/her torso. In the case of Ted Binion, he was also fed a toxic cocktail of heroin which was spoon-fed to him. The hope was that it would like as if Ted, who had been addicted to heroin, offed himself.

Now, while researching all of this, McManus takes the $4,000 advance that his editor at Harper's Magazine gives him and enters satellites for the Main Event of the 2000 World Series of Poker. He wins his way in and, to assuage his guilt for spending his advance on gambling, buys his wife an expensive ring. Jim also plays in the press event and doesn't do very well there. He discusses how he needs to tighten up and play right. He talks quite a bit about his 'training' for the ultimate poker title, the Main Event bracelet, a piece of bling any serious - and many not-so serious - poker player covets.

Jim fights a war between Good Jim and Bad Jim. Good Jim avoids red meat, swims laps every morning and abstains from alcohol and extramarital curriculars. Bad Jim drinks, eats cheeseburgers and steak, bums cigarettes off Katy Lederer, the sister of poker pros Howard Lederer and Annie Duke and heads off to a strip club and has a private lap dance with two lovely ladies - for research purposes.

Positively Fifth Street tells the reader a great deal about the sur-reality that is life in Las Vegas. The lure of Sin City may be too strong for any one man (or woman) to combat. However, Jim does make quite a fortune at the poker table - over $200,000 before taxes. He sticks to playing strategies he learns from one of his table mates, TJ Cloutier, the second runner-up in 2000 and a true Texas road gambler in the old-time tradition that the Horseshoe founder and father of Ted Binion, Mr. Benny Binion, would be proud of.

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Written by: Deanna Couras Goodson
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