While there's some neat history of the U.S. poker phenomenon hear, the author is way too close to his subject material. His passion, opinions, and lack of distance from the stuff he's writing about gets more & more in the way of the information he's trying to relate until I was skimming a lot of it by the end. Couple that with an inability to leave anything or anyone--no matter how tangential to the point he's trying to make--and the book goes from an entertaining beginning to a somewhat irritating slog near the end. ( )

2008 World Series of Poker starts May 30 and runs through July 17, 2008. The biggest event in poker today is described in this anthology of United States players from old western gaming in Arizona, Texas, and Nevada. We are swept along the trail from North Dakota and meander down the gold and silver rush towns to now ghost towns. As time passes in the twentieth century we are told of the exploits of Wild Bill Hickok and how he played poker with his six shooter. In response to a full house, Wild Bill said that he had 3 Aces over 2 sixes, when the other player said he saw only one six Hickok put his pistol on the table and said here is the other six. He won the hand!

This anecdotal form of writing is most interesting as Des Wilson takes us through the portals of moments when ghosts are visited in many poker parlors as he tries to imagine what it was like to have lived in that bygone era. Brief skirmishes are recounted as he tells of battles which were fought and the connection to poker is related in all of them.

His description of the gun fight at the OK Corral is wonderful, and the fact they all played poker the night before is fascinating.

The book seems to be two books in one; Wilson is so enamored with the WSOP that the second half tells of the personalities of the players of today. He does relate the formation of the event by Benny Binion at his famous Horseshoe in Las Vegas in 1970 and touches upon his ghost. Those players who will pay $10,000 to enter Harrah’s Rio, the situs of the 2008 contest, owe their opportunity to play to the ghosts of the past and those of the present. Being lucky and getting good cards is only part of winning in Texas Hold ‘Em, winning the gold bracelet is exemplified as being a paragon of the bluff. ( )