Aces and Kings

Aces and Kings, by Michael Kaplan and Brad Reagan, is the latest in a fast-growing genre of books based on professional poker players' stories and profiles, is an excellent collection of anecdotes and backgrounds of the biggest and brightest stars of the poker world today. It features profiles on all of the following players: Puggy Pearson, Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson, David 'Chip' Reese, Stu 'The Kid' Ungar, Erik Sidel, Phil Hellmuth, Men 'The Master' Nguyen, Howard 'The Professor' Lederer, David 'Devilfish' Ulliot, Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, and short features on the women of poker, Internet players, and the rising stars Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey and Erick Lindgren.

The main thing that Kaplan and Reagan extract from each player is how they got involved in poker, and what part of their game makes them unique in the poker world. For instance, they give information on Lederer's bookmaking lawsuit (which was completely bunk, but gave him a large headache all the same) and his intellectual approach to the game, Ferguson's Internet Relay Chat poker days and his strictly mathematical approach to poker, and how Reese came to Vegas on his way to law school, and with his expertise at stud poker, he never made it to Stanford and stayed in Vegas.

The most interesting chapter is on Stu Ungar, and his rise and fall from the top. If you know the story it's nothing new, but some insight as to his last days as well as excerpts of an interview in his last days make it stand out above the others. The chapter was actually included in a two-part series in CardPlayer recently, so you might have seen it there.

The authors didn't shy from controversy, either. In Men 'The Master's' chapter, they address a chip-stealing controversy from Foxwoods Casino recently. A fire broke out in his room with his crew of players, and the casino found tournament chips in his room. Men denies the allegations, but he was barred from the tournament-the official statement was that he was barred simply for the fire, and not for the chips. No official word has ever been given from the casino about the situation, though it's been widely thought that Men and his crew of Asian players have long been cheating and/or colluding with others in the group (which has been documented on an ESPN broadcast, where Men made Mihn Nguyen fold split queens against Men's split jacks in a stud event).

The book retails on Amazon.com for $16.47, and is available at the bottom of this page. Compared to other books of its type, I really enjoyed the detail given by the ten to fifteen page chapters. If you're looking for a good read on your next plane ride out to Vegas, this is definitely worthy of your time.

Review by Jon Eaton