Absolute Must-Read: Ghosts at the Table

Run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore. Beg, borrow, or steal - do whatever it takes - and pay the $26 cover price for Des Wilson's new book.

Ghosts at the Table: Riverboat Gamblers, Texas Rounders, Internet Gamers, and the Living Legends Who Made Poker What It Is Today is as magnificent a gambling text as I have ever read.

Ghosts is both entertaining and provocative. But making him far more worthy of critical praise, Wilson actually breaks much new ground here. The book contains an enormous amount of buried treasure. In fact, most poker fans will be surprised and perhaps even shocked by many of Wilson's discoveries.

I think it's fair to say that I am among the most widely read of poker historians. There is rarely a story or tale I encounter that I haven't already read or heard.

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, poker literature has reached a certain end game, and judging by my latest visit to Borders Books - where I counted 86 titles on the shelf - quite possibly a saturation point.

How many times can we rekindle the same old chestnuts of Jack Straus' chip and a chair, Stu Ungar's epic meltdown, or Chris Moneymaker's unlikely upset victory? Sure, these are all great poker stories.

But they're also like old Elvis songs. After you've heard them again and again a hundred times, most of us are ready to hear something else and learn something new.

Des Wilson: Master crafter.

Enter Des Wilson.

The British author and former political activist and businessman, who previously penned the highly acclaimed if somewhat oblique Swimming with the DevilFish, not only shatters some of poker's most widely propagated myths, he blows them away with a double-barrel shotgun.

There's so much felt-splitting material here that it's tough to know what appetizer to serve up in a book review without killing Wilson's main course of well-done chateaubriand.

At the risk of revealing some of Wilson's masterfully crafted, suspenseful narrative, you will never quite look at some of poker's legends quite the same way after reading this book.

For instance, Wilson makes the definitive case that the final table of the 1972 World Series of Poker was (dare I say it?) - fixed. He reveals that the famous Nick "The Greek" Dandalos versus Johnny Moss heads-up poker match held on Fremont Street a half-century ago was nothing more than a phony public relations stunt (fabricated long after "the game" was alleged to have occurred), and quite possibly never took place.

Wilson charges that the 1979 WSOP Main Event final table was played under the influence of drugs. The author also unveils the dusty reality of poker in the Old West, including the legendary saloon game that supposedly took place in Deadwood, South Dakota.

In the end, no stone left unturned.

Perhaps most heartbreaking of all, Wilson uncovers the real tragedy behind one of poker's greatest human mysteries - the true tale of what really happened to poor Hal Fowler after he won the 1979 world championship.

I had a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye when I read the chapter on Fowler, one of Wilson's most haunting "ghosts." My bet is that you will shed a tear for this ghost, too.

In what must certainly qualify as poker's greatest research project since Tony Holden's year-long self-immersion Big Deal was penned nearly 20 years ago, Wilson spent many months traveling throughout the U.S. investigating poker's rich and often misreported history.

That means he camped out for weeks in places like South Dakota, West Texas, and the sprawling industrial parks of urban Los Angeles. These are not garden spots, especially for a writer with the caliber of Wilson's talents. But it was a necessary pilgrimage to get each fact correct and every story right.

In the end, no stone is left unturned - or make that no card remains in the deck. The flop, turn and river are all here for everyone to see, and what the reader gets is a full house of material, with aces up. Wilson explains his intentions in the preface:

The history of poker does not rely just on previous writings and interviews. Whenever 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 today's game in the context of the 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 West - and I have done that and much more.

Plenty of face-time for Slim.

All so true. Reading certain passages, it's evident that Wilson defied believing the tales we've all been told and the lies we've accepted as fact for a far nobler purpose - pursuit of the truth.

The end result is a book containing Wilson's hours of interviews with "Amarillo Slim" Preston, Doyle Brunson, Bobby Hoff and many others, which take on added significance for their unique content and stark candidness.

Since I too was interviewed during his research, I witnessed firsthand that Wilson has a very special talent for getting the most out of his subjects. The reader is rewarded with a narrative that makes you feel you are right there in the same room with each of the legends, listening to them recount the good and bad old days.

This is a book that certainly appeals to a mainstream audience, more than just poker fans. No poker hands are debated or analyzed, nor are there any strategic concepts discussed here - just poker's rich history. Add in Wilson's expert craft for penning narrative, and what you have is one of the best poker chronicles ever written.

This is not to say that Ghosts qualifies as the definitive history of poker. Far from it. In some ways, he has merely scratched the surface of what really happened behind the scenes for over two centuries.

The reader is left to wonder - what else is out there that we don't really know? What other lies have we all been led to believe? If one takes away anything from Wilson's book it is to not believe all that has been recited, retold and rewritten.

Betfair Poker pro Annette Obrestad: Worthy of a place in poker's storied history? Wilson thinks so.

If I have a criticism of Ghosts, it's that Wilson wastes precious chapters on contemporary poker "stars."

Perhaps Wilson thought he needed to include some younger names and faces which are cabled and satellited into our living rooms every night in what seems like a ceaseless stream of poker programming.

He should instead have been comfortable enough with his more dated subject matter not to needlessly include players who may have only won a tournament or two, but who wouldn't otherwise be qualified to bring Johnny Moss his cup of morning coffee.

Indeed, Wilson's talent is researching, uncovering and then demystifying poker. A stellar effort is somewhat clouded by Wilson the iconoclast uncovering so many mysteries and then jumping on the sidelines during the final few chapters and playing the role of cheerleader.

If anything, Wilson proves beyond all doubt that poker journalism has largely been negligent with its investigative powers, derelict in its duty of reporting facts, and all that has been written is not necessarily true.

More blogs from Nolan Dalla:

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• From the Old School: Tales From Tony Shelton
  
• CBS' 60 Minutes to Dig Into Online Poker