Wilson - Ghosts at the Table: Riverboat Gamblers, Texas Rounders, Roadside Hucksters, and the Living Legends Who Made Poker What it is Today

... an enjoyable journey through the card-playing world, colored equally by Wilsons impressive journalistic background and his huge enthusiasm for the beautiful game The Guardian

Hugely enjoyable and highly informative Sunday Telegraph

The rich story of poker in Britain has never before been told. This is what Wilson offers, revealingly and compellingly, in a labor of love driven at a cracking pace... an action-packed read The Observer

[Wilson] is brilliant at explaining the finer points of the game, various hands and the psychological insights needed to be a top player... the book shines an awful lot of light on the game Daily Mirror

A book that finally puts Britain on the literary poker map Poker Player

Its gripping, revelatory and often very funny...a compulsive read from cover to cover Poker Europa

Des Wilson has come up with a true classic of poker literature... a delightful, thoughtful and enjoyable read literature... a delightful, thoughtful and enjoyable read PokerNews.com

Poker is about people more than cards. Top players have been known to win a hand without even looking at their cardsthey just know that if they make this bet at this moment with this opponent they will win, because their opponent will, in effect, walk away. This book, too, is about poker people, rather than cards. Its the players... the baseball-cap kid with dreams of wealth and glory, and the world-weary old pro bent on survival and a bankroll saved for another day... the high-stakes professional gambler and the dime-and-dollar amateur... the honest man for whom the games the thing, and the cheat and hustler to whom taking the money, by fair means or foul, is all that matters... its these poker people who give the game its special aura. And its the games mythologyenduring stories of characters and confrontations from the pastthat gives it a romance all of its own.

That does not mean this is a love storyfar from it. Poker is fascinating and fun, but, at the professional or semiprofessional level, it can be brutal. Poker players can be colorful, companionable, even generous away from the tablebut when theyre in the game theyre killers. They have to be, otherwise they should not be there. Sports stars get paid whether they win or lose; business leaders and politicians get paid whether they succeed or failbut not poker players: if they win they have money, if they lose they dont. The only way a poker player can win is to take someone elses moneythats the scorecard. No room for sentiment here.

On this journey from pokers past to its present I have not turned a blind eye to its less savory days and personalities. My story will not please everyone in the game. Yet it should because the game is greater than its coarser moments and players. It is no coincidence that poker has become so popular. Its great players are both fearless and exceptionally gifted. Its history is full of characters and color and competitive moments to compare with any recreational activity you can name. Away from the professional or semi-professional card rooms it is also enjoyed by millions and millions all over the world, in their homes, local clubs and pubs. Its both tough and uncompromising and companionable and enjoyable.

This history of poker does not rely just on previous writings and/or interviews. Wherever possible I have gone back to the places where it happened, to sniff the air and duck into the dark alleys where the game was played in its more dangerous days. My aim has been to set todays game in the context of its past. You have to drive for hour after hour after hour fadin the white line in Texas to understand how hard the lives of the road gamblers were... you have to go to Deadwood and Tombstone to fully understand the nature of those who lived and fought and played poker there in the days of the Wild Westand I have done that and much more.

Why has poker become so hugely popular? Partly because it works on television... partly because the Internet has made it a game one can play alone at home... partly because of the huge sums now spent promoting it, and the equally huge sums that can be won. Partly, too, its because it is such an endlessly fascinating game. But, all that said, I believe the key to its popularity is its history. The players, even the youngest, know it comes from the back alley, the gangsters den, the Western saloon. They know there was a time when there were guns in the game... they know that there are ghosts at the table. And thats what makes it special. Pokers history is always there, hovering over every hand, not least because some of the greatest names in its history are still alive, still competing and seemingly destined to play until the day theyre carried from the card room, their last hand dealt.

Pokers history is, above all, about the unique combination of guts, nerve, shrewdness, ruthlessness and survivability that have seen these extraordinary characters eventually come, with the game itself, out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

Ghosts at the Table is not an exhaustive history of poker. My aim has been to identify its special characters and the stories that matter, and, above all, to answer some of the games unanswered questions and solve some of its mysteries. This is a game shrouded in mythology. Perhaps its because fact merges with fiction, we hear so many versions of the more famous stories. Perhaps because it has been illegal in so many places for so long, poker is short on records and statistics. Perhaps because poker players live for the momentthis hand, this gamethey lack curiosity about what happened when and why. Whatever the reason, what should be simple questionslike where and when did Texas holdem begin?prove extraordinarily difficult to answer. But I believe I have got as close as its possible to get.

I have built my story around what I have identified as the four ages of poker:

First, old frontier poker... the poker of the riverboats and the Western gaming halls of the nineteenth century. In poker parlance, this was the game pre-flop