America’s game? Try poker

November 08, 2009|Glenn C. Altschuler, Globe Correspondent

Although the latest edition of The New Oxford American Dictionary doesn’t include the terms “flop,’’ “hold ’em,’’ or “Omaha,’’ poker, by most accounts, has become one of America’s favorite games. Invented 200 years ago in New Orleans, James McManus explains that what began as “The Cheating Game’’ embodies our fascination with “risk, initiative, and democratic opportunity.’’ “Poker thinking’’ extends into law, military and diplomatic strategy, business, the Internet, and artificial intelligence.

A sequel of sorts to “Positively Fifth Street,’’ McManus’ account of his fifth place finish in The World Series of Poker, “Cowboys Full’’ is a deal-me-in delight. Starting with a sweeping survey of the history of the game and its role in American culture, McManus ends with a smart, insiders’ analysis of how poker has been - and should be - played.

The book is stuffed with anecdotes. “Crooked Nose’’ Jack McCall, an “unimposing local,’’ McManus suggests, shot Wild Bill Hickok through the back of his Prince Albert frock coat while he was playing “high draw’’ in a Deadwood saloon. The reason? The legendary lawman had relieved McCall of $110 at the poker table and then condescendingly offered to buy him breakfast. Holding aces and eights, known ever after as “The Dead Man’s Hand,’’ Wild Bill may have had a nine of diamonds as his kicker. Convicted of murder and hanged, his killer was buried with the noose around his neck.

Though he knows it’s apocryphal, McManus also passes along an account of Nick “the Greek’’ Dandalos, taking a break from a marathon poker game to give Albert Einstein a tour of Las Vegas. Meet “Little Al from Princeton,’’ Nick told local gamblers. He “controls lotta the action ’round Jersey.’’

McManus argues that poker prepared presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Obama for the game of diplomacy, where luck, deceit, and calculating costs and benefits are essential, information is always incomplete, and the best hand doesn’t always win. Bluffs, re-raises, and smart lay downs, moreover, were at the heart of Cold War “game theory’’ developed in the 1940s by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern.