Sleepless Giants: The Legend of Johnny and the Greek

Between legend-making, exaggeration, and fabrication, there is reason to believe we don't know the accurate story. - Michael Craig What Michael Craig says about the celebrated match between Johnny Moss and Nick "The Greek" Dandalos can serve as the epigraph to nearly any account of...

Tuesday Apr 29, 2008

published 17 days ago in
Card Player Magazine Volume 21, Number 8

Blotzsky and Witherspoon: Ordinary Poker in the '40s and '50s

Now, everyone has his own opinion of how Joe Blow plays … - Daniel Negreanu In the middle decades of the 20th century, while presidents, generals, and scientific geniuses were playing poker to unwind after earthshaking workdays, reporter Allen Dowling and his newspaper cronies were doing...

Wednesday Apr 09, 2008

published 37 days ago in
Card Player Magazine Volume 21, Number 7

The Secretary, the President, His Wife, and Her Lover

Expert diplomatic poker player that he was, Molotov gave [Ribbentrop] no sign of being in a hurry. - William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich To unwind after his days managing a depression and then a world war, Franklin Roosevelt hosted a nightly cocktail hour in his second-floor...

Wednesday Mar 26, 2008

published 51 days ago in
Card Player Magazine Volume 21, Number 6

Ike, Dick, and Stanley

You are remembered for the rules you break. - Gen. Douglas MacArthur 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...

Wednesday Mar 12, 2008

published 65 days ago in
Card Player Magazine Volume 21, Number 5

Cold War Poker

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. - John von Neumann George Orwell first used the term "cold war" in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb" in October 1945, 10 weeks after Nagasaki and a year before publishing Animal...

Wednesday Feb 27, 2008

published 79 days ago in
Card Player Magazine Volume 21, Number 4

The Buck Stops With Vinson - or Winston

Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews. - Philip Roth, The Plot Against America As the 1944 election approached, the cardiologist treating FDR for...

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