Rating: 
Summary: Gambling and Loss???
Review: "We're better situated than most people. We've got good jobs. We had some extra money. It was disposable income in some sort of almost cartoonish sense, and we disposed of it. Most people, I suspect, don't have that luxury. A lot of people, even if they lose a little money, probably could have put that money to use in their lives in a way their lives needed." -Frederick BarthelmeThis is no tragedy or eye-opening story on the evils of gambling. If you want those meet me in Vegas! haha... These guys are just plain BAD gamblers. They claim to have read all the books on Blackjack and understand how to count cards to gain a small advantage over the house yet they find playing that way to be boring. They call themselves "above average" players but tell us they often take insurance bets. Even partial knowledge of basic strategy would keep an "above average" player from making this bet. They have no concept of money management and often spent hours chasing their losses with larger bets just trying to get back to even. And SLOTS??? jeezus! Knowing slots are a poor gaming choice these brothers still sunk thousands of dollars into them often hitting jackpots only to lose it all back by stepping up to the next denomination of machine. One brother won 130,000 in slot jackpots in one year and still lost several thousand on slots for the year. Their tales of gambling are pretty boring and can be witnessed every day by visiting a casino near you. Their addiction is that they like to have a good time and have the money to do it. The charges brought against them were pretty silly. The casino has tapes showing a dealer possibly giving signals on when to take insurance or not to. There were 50 something hands over 2 nights in question and we didn't get a detailed break down on the hands but when the casino finally pulled them off the table they were down several thousand dollars. So they are not only bad gamblers but possibly bad cheaters as well. I don't think there was probably any real threat of conviction. It did not scare them enough to stop gambling, they simply moved to another casino. They still gamble today. Awhile back an interviewer wanted to see them in action and he certainly did. 17,000 dollars lost over a few hours. Anyway, it is a quick read. Pretty unremarkable story. I read it on the plane to pass time. The money spent on this book would be better spent at your local casino. Hang out by the cash machine. Wait for some sad sack to pull out his last 20.00... buy him a drink and listen to his story!
Rating: 
Summary: This is a very charming book...
Review: ...and one that's best read while lying in bed from midnight until 4:30 a.m, even though you have to work at 8:30. Well-written in the extreme. It's part family, part casino... most of it told in an endearingly intimate tone. If you're planning on going to jail in Gulfport, Mississippi, you wouldn't want to miss it - it's a fancy primer. And any casino gambler can tell you that the depiction of the gaming 'stuff': the community of gamblers, the dealers, the winning, the losing... is right on the money.
Rating: 
Summary: Really captivating book, hard to say exactly why
Review: ...I think what sets Double Down apart from other fall from grace stories, though, is the style in which it's written. The authors mingle third and first person writing in a very effective way. It really feels like they're both writing every bit of their story together at the same time. And while the prose is not as thick with visual and emotional detail as you usually find in modern novels, that lends it a dreamlike quality that works well with the themes of pretending and avoiding that run all through it. There's no catharsis, no figuring out of anything at any sort of life-changing level, but the book sticks with you...One star short of 5 only because it seems like a 5-star book should give you a something more than an impression to take away with you.
Rating:
Summary: Addictive reading . . .
Review: A friend of mine gave me his copy of Double Down to read one morning at work, and once I started reading it I didn't put it down until I was finished. Anyone who has pulled a slot will immediately connect with these two brothers and have some understanding of what they experienced. Their losses could have been $30 instead of $300K+ and it wouldn't make any difference. The hook is in the Barthelme Bros thoughtful observations about the psychology that drives their compulsion - the hardness of a father who still has them in his grips, even from the grave + the mid-life search for that one big score . . . again, and again and again.
Rating: 
Summary: Detached and bloodless
Review: An entertaining work, and a good view into gambling psychology; but ultimately, I was disappointed. They seemed too abstract, too personally distant from their topic. There was no real sense of change (in fact, I read in a Salon interview that Frederick Barthelme has lost $17,000 in another casino this year, even after making it through to the other side of his harrowing legal experience). The style, overall, was very static, very detached and intellectual, especially when expressing intense passions, violent emotion. They are aware of of this, of course, and refer numerous times to their upbringing and family dynamics as a source for their defensive detachment, but recognizing it doesn't necessarily mean escaping it. They are very careful to skirt the trap of vulgar psychotherapy, where blame for their addiction falls on their parents (and the lack thereof), but nonetheless, they fall into it. Even as they deny the Freudian impulse in print, the very content and structure of the book belies their denial: about half of the book is devoted to describing their mother and father, and the effect their deaths had upon them, implicitly offering them as the primary explanation for their behavior. That may very well be the case; but they tell, rather than show, and the confessions stink of therapy sessions. The best parts were the descriptions of the Alice-in-Wonderland moments in their legal battles: getting 86'd from the Grand and being booked at the police station. Those two passages left the realm of the abstract, where Steve and Rick were embodiments of intellectual states of mind, and in those moments they became flesh-and-blood characters in their own memoir. I wish they had spent more time on storytelling, and less time on psychoanalysis.
Rating:
Summary: Good story poorly told
Review: An interesting book for anyone who's ever been addicted, especially to gambling. This work has a major weakness, the lack of an ending, satisfactory or otherwise. The idea that gambling addicts could spend as much time at the casinos as they say they did and not shortchange their employer and students, doesn't ring true. Also, there is no indication that either brother kept a detailed diary during their gambling sprees. The details, amounts, conversations, they supposedly recall for the book are suspect. Still, Double Down is a decent read. The brothers, however, were about the easiest pickings ever to enter a den of gambling. They learned surprisingly little about how to gamble. There is a bookshelf full of better books on the gambling life than this one. For example,Anthony Holden's Big Deal, Andy Bellin's Poker Nation, Jesse May's Shut Up and Deal, Ben Mezrich's Bring Down the House.
Rating: 
Summary: A double shame upon this duo
Review: As if the idiocy and profligacy that these two lowlifes actually commited weren't enough, the brothers Barthelme compound it with poor writing and a remarkable lack of self-knowledge in "Double Down." I just threw out my copy with the recycling, where hopefully, it will be made into junk mail flyers or another more worthy use of pulp. About a third of this book is devoted to that genre peculiar to the (usually first and last) nonfiction work of a would-be literary great: the biography that no one would ever write, and which no one would ever care to read. Literature fiends, especially those of the most modest accomplishment, must boil over with envy at the treatment given actual great writers, whose every familial and psychological nuance is scoured by biographers for hints at the cause of their peculiar genius. That certainly seems to be the case for the Bros. B., who exude a Menendez-like quality in their failed attempt to explain (blame?) their bad behavior on their upbringing. It falls flat, if less so than their own attempts at introspection: the only time spent discussing their own personal demeanors and motivations is a glorified section on how smugly superior they felt as big bad literary men on a small southern campus, mixed in with their own puzzlement at how they could be so stupid as to blow through thousands, night after night (hint, guys: you are dumb). The descriptions of casino action are lifeless; it is impossible to conceive of how something worthy of so boring a description could have addicted and capitvated two creative, active human minds (however, in this case, it just suckered in another couple of small-town rubes, who happened to have a general grasp of grammar). In stark contrast, see McManus' "Positively Fifth Street," which is captivating both for its gambling action and in the general level of writing quality. Everybody likes a winner; at least everyone can sympathize for a likeable loser. The Bros. B. are neither, and I look forward to the day they die broke in a gutter, having squandered their father's fortune and trust posthumously, and having wasted my leisure reading time for the week. Good riddance.
Rating:
Summary: Hook 'em
Review: As someone with a father who was impossible to please, I can really understand why these two brothers were searching so hard for success any way they could find it - even from strangers dealing cards. I can't think of a more appropriate ending than one where the dollars that were so carefully saved by that father are gambled away still searching for his approval. Their run in with the law is really secondary to the life sentence handed down from their father - always feeling that they don't yet have it quite right.
Rating:
Summary: A story of loss
Review: Double Down is a terrific book about loss. Frederick and Steve Barthelme are brothers who moved to Mississippi to become college professors. They come from a very close knit family, and when it is unwoven from the death of their Mother and Father, a gambling addiction is triggered. Steve and Frederick become regulars at The Grand, a local casino, and they start going at least once a week and spending the whole night there all the way into early morning. After blowing all of their inheritance from their parents, they are acussed of cheating. They were indicted and charged with a felony, and forever kicked out of their favorite casino. This didn't stop their gambling addiction, however it did slow it down. They make fewer trips, to another casino and are less intense gamblers. The book was well written and for the most part it kept my attention. Some parts they seemed to ramble off about their parents and family, and it gets slow. The accounts of their gambling binges keep you wanting more. They know they should stop, but keep throwing their money in anyway. I recommend this to everyone who is intrested in gambling.
Rating:
Summary: Double Down
Review: Double Down, a book about two brothers who discover the world of gambling, has the suspense and drama needed for a good gambling story. The two brothers, who happen to be respectable college professors, move down South to Mississippi to be around their parents. The family, which has drifted apart through the years, has come together for their parent's final years. Soon after their dad die's, the inheritance money starts burning a hole in the brother's pockets. Riverboat gambling puts out the fire. The wild ride lasts for two years, until the Casino accuses them of cheating. Through it all, the brother's learn about themselves, family, and why people do the things they do.
|
