Martin Harris - Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of Americas Favorite Card Game

This book had to be written, and only one person could write it. Pokers place in our culture has been Martins passion and expertise as long as Ive known him. Poker is a story of a thousand stories, and theyre all here.

Tommy Angelo, author of Elements of Poker and Painless Poker

A thorough, well-informed and highly entertaining exploration of the cultural riches bred by poker, explaining why the game remains so quintessentially American while growing ever more universal.

Anthony Holden, author of Big Deal and Bigger Deal

Martin Harriss Poker & Pop Culture is a lively, well researched, highly readable account of the games hold on the popular imagination, revealing its history - from Shakespeare to ESPN, Flash Kate to James Bond, Tony Soprano to Daniel Negreanu - with 1,001 telling details. A+ Americana, and then some.

James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full

Heralded or condemned, in good times, bad times, dead or alive, poker has been through it all, and proven itself to be the ultimate survivor. Kudos to Martin Harris for his staggeringly in depth look at its intriguing history. Poker & Pop Culture holds all the cards and knows where the bodies are buried. So I highly suggest you pull up a comfy chair and deal yourself in for a terrific read!

Joseph Walsh, actor, screenwriter and co-producer of California Split

Poker & Pop Culture is more than the most detailed history of Americas favorite card game Ive read yet. Martin Harris has written a monumentally readable, always engaging look at how poker has appeared in literature, television, movies, and other places. Filled with fascinating anecdotes about real-life and fictional poker games, this book is worth reading and re-reading. From John Wayne to William Shatner, Mississippi riverboats to online sites and countless places in between, Harris covers it all.

David G. Schwartz, author of Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling

Martin has always been one of my favorite poker writers - and Im looking forward to seeing what hes created in Poker & Pop Culture. Its sure to be interesting and lively!

Maria Konnikova, author of Mastermind and The Confidence Game

Do not believe the absent-minded professor shtick. Martin Harris is the smartest person in poker. Like all great professors, he has the uncanny ability to boil down complex subjects and unravel tangled history to present a succinct timeline and understandable narrative of events.

Paul Dr. Pauly McGuire, author of Lost Vegas

I always wondered what exhaustively researched really meant. Now I know. Harris has unearthed a staggering array of juicy poker facts and lore from literature, movies, television, music and history, but his accomplishment goes far beyond its remarkable thoroughness, giving context, stature and meaning to Americas game, conveying it all in a delightfully elegant prose that is as heady and surprising as hitting a one-outer on the river. Poker & Pop Culture is a fist-pumping winner of a book.

Peter Alson, author of Take Me to the River and co-author of One of a Kind

That the beautiful game of poker has spawned the tales of cheats and cardsharps and the most unsavory of muckrakers for me only adds to the allure. Poker is a game about character, after all, and what would character entail if not the basest things about us? Martin Harris swims in the details, glowingly, unflinchingly, and boldly peeling back the layers on the narrative of our game. I salute him for compiling these stories, for we who love the beautiful game of poker, we are the sons and daughters of riverboat gamblers, the descendants of presidents, and the sixth cousins of the baddest Stetson to ever pull a six-shooter from their waistband when laying down a paltry two pair. This tome is the definitive fabric of poker.

Jesse May, author of Shut Up and Deal

Im insanely jealous of Martin Harris. At major poker events where we worked together side-by-side, Martin always seemed to arrive first, and leave last long after the workday was done. His tenacity usually paid off with outstanding content. Martin got the stories the rest of us missed. Now, Martin has penned a new book about poker and culture packed with brilliant insights. Damn you, Martin Harris!

Nolan Dalla, poker writer and co-author of One of a Kind

First published in 2019 by D&B Publishing

Copyright 2019 Martin Harris

The right of Martin Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 909457 98 0

Cover and book design by Horacio Monteverde.
Printed and bound by Versa Press in the US.

All sales enquiries should be directed to D&B Publishing:

www.dandbpoker.com

Martin Harris

Martin Harris is a writer, teacher, and poker reporter who has covered the game for the last dozen years. He earned a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University at Bloomington and has taught full- and part-time at the university level for two decades. He currently teaches in the American Studies program at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, where his courses include Poker in American Film and Culture and Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics.

Poker is not a team game, but you need others to play. The same goes for writing a book, a task necessarily performed alone, but in most cases impossible to achieve without the support of others. In my case, the list of those who have helped is a long one.

Special thanks to Haley Hintze for recruiting me to write and report on poker long ago and also for suggesting to me the idea of writing articles about poker & pop culture. Thanks to David G. Schwartz who played an important role early on that set me on the path to writing this book, then helped provide support again during the projects latter stages. Thanks to Dan Addelman and Byron Jacobs for making the idea of the book a reality. Thanks as well to James McManus for his encouragement to me along the way, and to Howard Swains for his important guidance and advice at the end.

Thanks to Paula Eckard and the American Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and to the many students in my Poker in American Film and Culture course whose responses to some of the material presented here helped shape my own thinking about pokers significance. Also thanks to the University of Nevada Las Vegas and the Center for Gaming Research for their support which added greatly to the final product.

Thanks to John Caldwell, Garry Gates, Brad Willis, Simon Young, Dave Al-lan, Paudie OReilly, Michael Craig, Matt Showell, Eric Ramsey, Ging Masin-da, Maryann Morrison, Donnie Peters, Matthew Parvis, and Frank Op de Woerd for having provided me opportunities to write and report on poker. Being part of numerous poker reporting teams over the years has not only been a rewarding professional experience (and useful to opening my eyes further to pokers impact not just in America but in the 20 or so countries to which Ive had the chance to travel while following the game), but also introduced me to many other great colleagues and friends. Besides those already mentioned, I want especially to acknowledge Stephen Bartley, Dave Behr, Marc Convey, Joe Giron, Jason Kirk, Paul McGuire, Carlos Monti, Ser-gio Prado, Rich Ryan, Jack Stanton, Reinaldo Venegas, Alexander Villegas, and Nick Wright for having helped make those work experiences so much fun. Thanks as well to Lane Anderson, Kristy Arnett, Kristen Bihr, Gene Bromberg, Josh Cahlik, Anthony Charter, Heath Chick, Matt Clark, Brett Collson, Sam Cosby, Valerie Cross, Rick Dacey, Marty Derbyshire, Benjamin Gallen, Mickey Doft, Tim Duckworth, Yori Eskamp, Lynn Gilmartin, Adam Goulding, Chris Hall, Mad Harper, Sarah Herring, Chad Holloway, Steve Horton, Dana Immanuel, Aleeyah Jadavji, Thomas Koo, Jan Kores, Pamela Maldonado, Kevin Mathers, Danny Maxwell, Mickey May, Maria Paula Montero, B.J. Nemeth, Jennifer Newell, Mo Nuwwarah, Will OConnor, Paul Oresteen, Brittany Paige, Mateusz Pater, Matthew Pitt, Remko Rinkema, Matt Savage, Will Shillibier, Tomas Stacha, Neil Stoddart, Kevin Taylor, Ren Velli, Matt Wehner, Jessica Welman, and Christian Zetzsche for their friendship and support as we together followed poker being played all over the globe.