Cowboys full
Subtitle: the story of poker
By: James McManus
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 516
ISBN-13: 9780374299248
Description: From the Publisher:  From James McManus, author of the bestselling Positively Fifth Street, comes the definitive story of the game that, more than any other, reflects who we are and how we operate. Cowboys Full is the story of poker, from its roots in China, the Middle East, and Europe to its ascent as a global-but especially an American-phenomenon. It describes how early Americans took a French parlor game and, with a few extra cards and an entrepreneurial spirit, turned it into a national craze by the time of the Civil War. From the kitchen-table games of ordinary citizens to its influence on generals and diplomats, poker has gone hand in hand with our national experience. Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama have deployed poker and its strategies to explain policy, to relax with friends, to negotiate treaties and crises, and as a political networking tool. The ways we all do battle and business are echoed by poker tactics: cheating and thwarting cheaters, leveraging uncertainty, bluffing and sussing out bluffers, managing risk and reward. Cowboys Full shows how what was once accurately called the cheater's game has become a mostly honest contest of cunning, mathematical precision, and luck. It explains how poker, formerly dominated by cardsharps, is now the most popular card game in Europe, East Asia, Australia, South America, and cyberspace, as well as on television. It combines colorful history with firsthand experience from today's professional tour. And it examines poker's remarkable hold on American culture, from paintings by Frederic Remington to countless poker novels, movies, and plays. Braiding the thrill of individual hands with new ways of seeing poker's relevance to our military, diplomatic, business, and personal affairs, Cowboys Full is sure to become the classic account of America's favorite pastime.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: 1:  Pokerticians; title: 2:  Loaded knucklebones to donkeys in cyberspace; title: 3:  Shivering shaman and the concubines of invention; title: 4:  Jeanne d'Arc and la hire to the naked singularity of spades; title: 5:  Dr Jerome Cardplayer and the vying games that gave rise to poker; title: 6:  Poque to pokuh to poker; title: 7:  Mississippi steamboats, the Internet card rooms of 1814; title: 8:  Cheating game; title: 9:  Styles and technologies of cheating; title: 10:  Sharps reformed and unreconstructed; title: 11:  Decks cold and colder; title: 12:  Mary situation; title: 13:  Look away, Dixie Land; title: 14:  Wizard; title: 15:  Nary a pair; title: 16:  Aces and eights; title: 17:  Early draw primers; title: 18:  Stud poker; title: 19:  High plains drifters; title: 20:  Cowboys play poker; title: 21:  Dogs playing poker; title: 22:  Mirror, the riffle, the shift, and the shark; title: 23:  Education of a poker player, part 1; title: 24:  Hump guns down brain over stud debt!; title: 25:  Education of a poker player, part 2; title: 26:  Secretary, the president, his wife, and her lover; title: 27:  Education of a poker player, part 3; title: 28:  Buck stops with Vinson-or Winston; title: 29:  Cold War poker; title: 30:  Dowling and Kriegel, Blotzsky and Witherspoon; title: 31:  Legend of Johnny and the Greek; title: 32:  Hold me, darlin'; title: 33:  Opposite of a peace sign; title: 34:  Two burn holes in a blanket; title: 35:  World series of poker, part 1; title: 36:  Gardena, that seventies poker capital; title: 37:  World series of poker, part 2; title: 38: World series of poker, part 3; title: 39:  World series of poker, part 4; title: 40:  World series of poker, part 5; title: 41:  Small ball, the bluff, and the boom; title: 42:  Drawing red lines in the desert, or how (not) to bluff a martyr; title: 43:  Fooled by randomness; title: 44:  Bunches of luck; title: 45:  Biology and Eros of no-limit hold'em tournaments; title: 46:  Andy game, part 1; title: 47:  Andy game, part 2; title: 48:  LH and AI; title: 49:  Poker world is flat (in spite of the UIGEA); title: 50:  Cheating 2_0; title: 51:  Poker school, poker law, poker ethics; title: 52:  World's game; title: Notes; title: Selected bibliography; title: Glossary of poker terms; title: Acknowledgments; title: Index.