"Poker: The Story of America's National Pastime" is a special
Card Player feature written by James McManus focusing on
the origins and evolution of the game.
James McManus is the author of the classic bestseller Positively
Fifth Street and seven other books. His work appears in The New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Harpers, The Best American
Sports Writing and many other anthologies. He also teaches a course
on the literature and history of poker at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago. These historical columns are part of McManus's
next book, which is scheduled to be published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux in 2009.
20 days ago
Massachusetts Congressman Thomas "Tip" O'Neill was no peacenik or Viet Cong sympathizer. Although his congressional district included 22 colleges, with more students and professors than any district in America, the majority of this burly Irish Democrat's votes came from the working-class precincts of Boston and Cambridge, where in the mid-1960s support for the war was close to unanimous. The result was that very few members of Congress spoke up for President Johnson's troop escalation more strongly.
41 days ago
Though the games are quite different, Texas hold'em is often called a variant of seven-card stud. This is mainly because no draw takes place in either game and players have a board of exposed cards in both -- individual in stud, shared in hold'em -- for a total of seven cards from which to make a five-card poker hand.
83 days ago
To unwind after his days managing a depression and then a world war, Franklin Roosevelt hosted a nightly cocktail hour in his second-floor study. "How about another sippy?" he would ask from his wheelchair before splashing together old-fashioneds and martinis amid the clutter of his desk. Though he seldom had more than one drink, he relished this down-time for the chance it gave him and his staff to recharge their batteries, the better to face the mind-bending decisions the next day would certainly bring. A simple dinner would often be served, followed a few times a week by a game of low-stakes poker.
102 days ago
Unlike Truman, Roosevelt, Harding, and the other White House residents who played poker to relax with advisors and friends, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon seldom if ever competed for even minimal stakes while in office. And the men who shared the Republican ticket in 1952 and 1956 certainly never mentioned the game while campaigning, even though both of them had played for life-changing stakes while serving in their country's armed forces.
124 days ago
As the 1944 election approached, the cardiologist treating FDR for congestive heart failure believed the crippled president had less than a year to live. While the prognosis remained a closely guarded secret, ordinary citizens could see the darkness beneath Roosevelt's eyes and how badly his hands shook, though with the war very much undecided, a majority still hoped to retain their commander in chief.
