Product Description
An overeducated underachiever, Peter Alson spent his post-college decades doing his best not to grow up. But having just turned fifty, this rambling-gambling bachelor decides it’s time to settle down. So he pops the question to his longtime girlfriend, then hatches a plan to pay for their wedding — involving poker and a trip to Las Vegas. Boarding a plane bound for the neon desert and the biggest game in town — the 2005 World Series of Poker — this inveterate gam… More >>
Take Me to the River: A Wayward and Perilous Journey to the World Series of Poker
Tags: gam, Journey, longtime girlfriend, Perilous, perilous journey, peter alson, Poker, River, Series, Take, trip to las vegas, underachiever, Wayward, World, world series, world series of poker
This is the story of a poker player/writer’s struggle with the 2005 WSOP while trying to maintain a relationship with his fiancee back in Brooklyn.
Maybe I wanted more insight into poker playing. Maybe a deeper read of all the famous players he mentions. The book does not have the rousing poker triumph of Positively Fifth Street. (But he is a really good player and does win overall.)
Really a sort of diary of his 2005 Las Vegas poker outing combined with his long-distance romance.
Based on his terrific One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey ‘,The Kid’, Ungar, The World’s Greatest Poker Player, I expected more.
Rating: 4 / 5
I had a hard time getting thru this book for 2 reasons. First reason-peter Alston seems like a complete and total jerk to me. Taking a prostitute’s phone number, jerking a girl around re: wedding plans (at the age of 50), etc. Second reason i did not like this book is that Peter managed to make the WSOP boring. I wish he described the players we’ve come to know and love (and hate) on Tv in more depth instead of going into such detail about his loser friend.
Rating: 2 / 5
Awesome book.
If someone is discouraged buy story splitting between Peter’s life in WSOP and pre-marriage happenings between him and his future wife – do not. Both parts are well blended together and we get most exciting insight in one mans life during WSOP. The poker action is well presented and author becomes one of our long known friend, who says to us without nothing to hide. Book never gets boring and pages just fly away.
Rating: 5 / 5
Peter is a terrific, comic, truthful writer. This most enjoyable book would make a wonderful Christmas gift for anyone from 12 to 100 who likes poker, Las Vegas, and romance. Peter has been writing about and attending the World Series of Poker for decades. I have played with him in the cash side games over the years. He is a fine poker player and knows what he is talking about. He knows everyone in the poker world, the main writers and players. I just loved this book and the one with Nolan Dalla about Stu Ungar.
In about forty years, Peter and his bride will be sitting in rockers outside the Old Poker Player’s Retirement Home. She will suddenly turn on him and bring up the time in Vegas he kept the whore’s phone number while she was planning a wedding. He should have never been that honest, but honesty makes this a fantastic book. If Peter tells you a hen dips snuff, look under her wing and you will find a can.
Johnny Hughes, author of the upcoming novel, Texas Poker Wisdom.Texas Poker Wisdom
Rating: 5 / 5
Peter Alson’s memor is an excellent way to savor the legends and lore of the poker world, circa 2004-05, as well as the intricacies of the game at all levels, from small cash games in New York City to monster Las Vegas tournaments, including the Word Series of Poker. He takes us through virtually every kind of hand and pot situation and details the options open to him at every step, from the amount of a raise to a deciphering of the facial and body quirks (“tells”) of an opponent. The nutty, endearing cavalcade of addicts and characters of the poker world are deftly depicted, and Alson is not reticent about his own quirks and ambivalences–in love and in poker.
His trip to Vegas comes hard on the heels of his decision (and his finacee’s, Alice) to get married. The narrative shifts easily between his love of poker and his love of Alice, who visits him during the six-week period the narrative covers. We are taken all around Vegas and environs, from swanky restaurants to two-bit joints as he prepares for and worries about the big game which is the climax of the book. Over 5,000 people plunk down $10K for the chance to win $7.5 million; Alson is one of them, but he is also a committed observer of the scene. So he is both in and out of the game, a player and a watcher. His language is fast, funny, sly, snarky, hip and always nuanced. But he takes care to explain everything carefully, if not laboriously, including a few, very necessary footnotes.
Recommended for two kinds of people: those who love poker and those who relish a fast-paced contemporary memoir written in the high vernacular of a literary gambler.
Rating: 5 / 5