Bigger Deal

Expertise at poker used to be an unwritten job requirement for all would-be US Presidents. Proficient White House poker-players have ranged from Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Harding to FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon. We poker players can only be expected to approve. Were I a US citizen, the poker-playing candidate […]

The phone rang. It was my friend T. “Have you heard?” he asked. Whenever a New York poker player asks me if I’ve heard, I know that he is about to tell me some bad news. Poker is illegal in the big bad city, which means that the clubs are targets for both cops and robbers. […]

My annual trip to the WSOP isn’t what it used to be. I’m not single anymore for one thing. I’ve got responsibilities. A wife. A child. And I’m older. I’ve got hemherroids. I can’t sit on my ass for days on end. The Main Event? Forget it. Two weeks is about a week too long. […]

I’ve been playing at the underground card clubs in New York again, after a slight break following the birth of our daughter, Eden River (yes, someday she will be able to divine the true nature of her daddy’s degenerate ways in the tea leaves of her middle name - but you have to admit it’s a […]

Last night I wound up playing poker in Manhattan with actor-writer Steve Martin, editor-historian Sir Harold Evans, academic Logan Browning, art historian Everett Fahy and poker writers Peter Alson,  Michael Craig and John Stravinsky. Yup, a wild and crazy bunch indeed. We were all cleaned out by my editor at Simon & Schuster, Amanda Murray […]