Book Review: The Biggest Game in Town
I should have known by the 1983 initial publication date, but when I first picked up A. Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town, I mistakenly thought it was about the “Big Game,” the high-stakes, typically $4000/$8000 bet limit poker game that takes place semi-regularly among the best players in the world in Bobby’s Room of the poker room of the Bellagio Hotel & Casino. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the book’s title is not a reference to “The Big Game” but a more generic reference to poker, the biggest game, according to the author, in Las Vegas.
The book has diverting appeal. For those familiar with the big veteran names in poker — Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Bobby Baldwin, etc. — the book is a biography of the beginnings and escapades of these early poker mavericks. For those following or engaged in the recent popularity of tournament poker, the book provides historical insight into how poker took root in Las Vegas and the formation of the World Series of Poker. Most interesting to me, however, were the numerous stories depicting the gambling nature of the poker players, bringing to mind this quote by S.W. Erdnase:
The passion for play is probably as old, and will be as enduring, as the race of man. Some of us are too timid to risk a dollar, but the percentage of people in this feverish nation who would not enjoy winning one is very small. The passion culminates in the professional. He would rather play than eat. Winning is not his sole delight. Some one has remarked that there is but one pleasure in life greater than winning, that is, in making the hazard.
The Expert at the Card Table, S.W. Erdnase (.html edition) (2000) (Jose Antonio Gonzalez).
The Biggest Game in Town affirmed my (possibly delusional) belief that I am only moderately a gambler — at least when compared to the poker players in the book and many of my degenerate poker buddies (you know who you are). I know that poker is predominantly a game of skill that involves elements of luck. I enjoy the occasional risks or wagers. But, ultimately, my distate for losing, and particularly for losing money, are far too great to take unnecessary risks where I believe I’m more likely than not to lose, regardless of the amounts or odds. I love action, just judicious amounts of it.
