From Casablanca to The Hustler, from Moby Dick to How I Made $1,000,000 Playing Poker, these widely varied musings address the entire range of human emotion-the highs of excitement of the "juice" down to the depths of despair of losing. Covered here are gaming's universality and history, superstition and luck, players and places, and also every game, from the lowliest back-alley crap shoot to the highest-stakes poker contest and everything in between.

You'll find quotable phrases from luminaries like Plato and Tom Wolfe, along with the hard-scrabble advice of Minnesota Fats and Nick the Greek, and humor and pith from the likes of Woody Allen, Charles Bukowski, David Mamet, Groucho Marx, Hunter S. Thompson, and many, many more!