Rating: 
Summary: Awesome Writing - Captivating, Exciting - A Page Turner!
Review: Two incredible stories tied into one amazing experience and one great book. A word of caution for all of you looking for a how-to-win at poker book - this is NOT IT! Some of these other reviews are obviously from people wanting more about how to make it to the final table at Binion's - this is not that book.What it is though is an exciting tale, very well written by a true literary who happens to be a poker fanatic that had a great string of luck at the most opportune time. The murder portion of the story is quite incredible itself and I'd be surprised if there isn't a TV movie made about it soon - because you won't believe what went on. I loved it - READ THIS BOOK!
Rating: 
Summary: Somebody get an editor!
Review: If the reader is willing to bypass McManus's forays into: 1. His personal life, and . . .
2. The court trial that the tries to weave masterfully into the poker narrative, then . . . then he is rewarded with a rousing, insightful, and quite amazing story of a gifted amateur player having the run of this life. Otherwise, said reader is subjected to McManus's gratuitous sermonizing, unflattering "tell-all" confessions, and (worst of all) padding and filler as he traverses the book's pages. The ending is a crime in-and-of-itself, as McManus submarines his own tale with material that ANY editor worth his salt would have cut.
Rating:
Summary: Poker? I don't even know her.
Review: On the jacket a reviewer says this book contains some of the best sports writing you can read. I agree totally. And unlike some of the other reviewers, I did enjoy the sections on the Ted Bunion murder trial (this past month, the conviction of the woman involved was overturned). However, I felt it was poorly edited. It just didn't flow. And finally, I think we are all in agreement that the reader could have done with a lot less of his person life and upbringing.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Deal
Review: To quote Kenny Rogers: "You've got to know when to hold, know when to fold." Sent by "Harpers" to cover both the World Series of Poker and the trial for Ted Binion's accused murderers, McManus had unexpected success as an actual player while failing in his book-length effort to capture the combined essence of the two events. Despite beginning with a lurid, fictionalized account of Bionion's actual demise, he quickly makes it clear that his interest lies in the game and he embarks on a rambling, self-indulgent description of his long-time fascination with poker, combined with a detailed report of his progress to the final table for the Series. There are desultory attempts to provide further details on Binion, his accused and the demimonde they inhabit but the author's intent seems to be to convey the thrill of high-stakes gambling. Whether the recapitulation of poker hands makes for an engrossing read perhaps depends upon the individual reader's own interests. It struck me as tedious and lacking in the tension which presumably attended the actual event.
Dealt a challenging double assignment, McManus sought to parlay the experience into a winning book. His professional work as a writing instructor did not serve him well in this attempt. Deficiencies in structure and foccus detract from the finished product. Better he should have folded.
Rating:
Summary: Positively Boring!
Review: I was so excited to read this book after all the glowing reviews. I had previously enjoyed Big Deal and the two Michael Konik gambling story collections and I was ready to add this one to my list of classics. Not even close! Unbelievably boring writing about poker which is surprising considering that the author got so far in the World Series, and it's filled with many technical errors that any regular player will find annoying. Very disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: The World Championship of Bad Writing
Review: POSITIVELY FIFTH STREET
James McManus The first eleven pages of this non-fiction book relate, in exacting detail, how Las Vegas casino scion Ted Binion was tortured and murdered by his stripper girlfriend and her ex-linebacker lover. On the next page, author McManus admits that the account is merely how he "imagines" the murder occurred. Hey, thanks for telling us in advance, Jim. Don't expect things to get any better. The book grew out of an assignment the author received to produce a short feature on the World Series of Poker, held each spring in Binion's Horseshoe Casino, for Harper's Magazine. As a short feature it might have worked, but expanding it to book length was the worst idea since Sammy Sosa decided, "what the hell, no will ever know it was corked." One of the problems is that McManus, like many academics, does not possess the writing skills to handle the transition to the longer form. His style is so clunky and ponderous that the book ends up reading like something translated from the original Russian by Howie Mandel. "Because La-Z-Boy time dandling our kids with the game on while Mom beams across from the sofa is simply to scary to contemplate losing; most of us also respect other men's need to preserve their domestic bliss," reads one gem, perhaps the worst sentence in the history of American publishing. A patron in a bar is "comprehensively bewitched." The author, attempting to explain that he is bored, tells us that "time trudged recalcitrantly," thereby achieving the bad grammar hat trick: felony sentence construction, inventing an adverb, and clueless as to the meaning of the word in the first place. The second big problem is his struggle to come up with the extra 380 pages. Padding, as anyone who has ever tried to stretch a half page of material into a three-page term paper knows, is a difficult task. McManus becomes so desperate that he even resorts to using the same Dostoyevsky quote twice. Did he really think no one would notice? The solution he finally adopts, even though he is in a casino jammed with interesting characters, is to write about himself. Biiiiiigggg Mistake! Not only is his life totally devoid of interest to anyone but him, he compounds the problem by including long, pointless conversations with his wife in which they call each other by their pet names. Hey Ted, now we know how it feels to be tortured. McManus fares no better with his facts, stating, in an attempt to illustrate the skill of Vegas attorney Oscar Goodman, that Charles Harrelson, who murdered a federal judge in Texas and is the father of actor Woody, was set free because of Goodman's brilliance. Well, Goodman is brilliant all right, but Harrelson was convicted for that murder and has resided in the federal slammer ever since. "I must have been crazy to try this," the author says at one point. Finally got something right.
Rating:
Summary: I folded on this book
Review: I am fascinated by the world of competitive poker and I love a great murder/crime story. I thought this would be the perfect book my summer reading. I looked forward to learning about the sorrid history of Binion's WSOP and how to survive the tournament. I gave up about halfway through. The author is a journalist and you can tell. He can't sustain a train of thought for more than 5 pages. How did his editor let him get away with this? What I really hated was the Bad Jim/Good Jim. The multiple page soliquy on whether or not to receive a lap dance served absolutely no purpose. His inner ramblings only made me dislike the author more. I was hoping he would be eliminated from the tournament and his wife would leave him for losing thousands of dollars.
Rating:
Summary: Lucky at Cards, Unlucky at Writing . . .
Review: The author was blessed with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tell an insider's story of the World Series of Poker, all set against the background of a sex and drug-laced murder and trial. Rather than being content simply to tell that story and to try to tell it well, Mr. McManus meanders through pointless and uninteresting self-analysis ("Good Jim" v. "Bad Jim" -- my gosh . . .), self-important asides, and just plain lazy writing. An editor would have been useful. Save the cost of the book and bet the money in Vegas instead. Even if you lose, your money's been better spent.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding.
Review: I loved this book from start to finish. I thought he told the story of the Binion murder trial well and the poker portion of the book was riveting as well. Unlike some, I had no problem with the interweaving of the 2 stories, And beyond all of that, I thought that Mr. McManus had a beautiful and flowing writing style that I could never hope to duplicate in 100 year (even though I sort of write for a living). Every sentence was put together just right. This is why I was especially shocked to see a few complaints about his writing, which I though was an absolute strength. If I had any nit to pick, it is the poker lingo often got so heavy that I felt like I had to refer to the Terminology section over and over again, which tended to disrupt the flow of the reading (even though I have read a few other poker books like Andy Bellin's Poker Nation which I also enjoyed). However that nit was not nearly enough for me to give the book anything less than 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Positively average.
Review: Author David Sedaris raves on the back cover of this book: "In writing about poker, Jim McManus manages to write about everything." For me, that's just the problem. "Positively Fifth Street" is an ambitious effort to tackle too many stories at the same time while spiking the whole of it with as many side anecdotes as possible. The book's three stories - the World Series of Poker (WSOP); the horrific murder of casino legend Ted Binion; and the success of women at the tournament - are meant to bolster one another. The discussion of highly competitive, testosterone inducing late-night poker is meant to illuminate how Ted Binion's savage murder could become a game to his murderers - a friend and his lover. Unfortunately, the murder mystery is not remotely as interesting as the poker tournament, and McManus makes giant, and unconvincing, metaphorical leaps to keep the two stories intertwined. Over the course of the book, McManus covers the history of playing cards, baseball's similarities with poker, artificial intelligence, his teaching career in Chicago, and Aristotle (among other things). The intense thrill of the World Series of Poker is continually interrupted to update the Binion murder trial, and the discussion of women and the WSOP gets abandoned at roughly the same time that the book becomes a pseudo-autobiography. Despite the schizophrenic nature of the book, McManus's play-by-play of his success at the tournament is spectacular. Sent to the tournament as a journalist with no poker tournament experience under his belt, McManus wins a spot in the Big One (the tournament) by winning a satellite tournament, and keeps winning all the way to the final table - an incredible feat. The tournament is four days of agonizing and exhausting play, full of daring bluffs and inconceivable luck, and the author's battles with Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and tournament titan T.J. Cloutier are gripping. McManus is a great writer with a knack for explaining the intricacies of no-limit Texas Hold'em poker, but the murder mystery element slows this book down. I want to hear more about what it feels like to have the trey of diamonds spike on the river when you've got an A-4 in the hole, and a possible flush draw set up by the deuce and 4 in the flop. But too often, McManus deals us the wrong story.
| 
