Claire had told me in no uncertain terms that we must not buy any more poker books on this trip. There’s already probably a dozen that I haven’t read back at home.
So today we went to the Gamblers General Store and Gamblers Book Store and we returned with a total 9 books and a magazine.
One of them – Killer Poker Online 2 – was even signed by author John Vorhaus, who apparently brought a few pre-release copies for the Gamblers Book Store to sell at the WSOP Gaming Life Expo – it’s not officially published yet, but these guys have juice. He wrote in it “Don’t play crap hands”. Top tip.
We met Vegas legend Howard Schwartz, a man whose life has been gambling books for nearly 30 years. He saw us as fresh meat when we walked through the door and a few seconds later he launched into his customer rapport-building spiel about where we must be from. The conculsion, eventually, was Pennsylvania. Something to do with my forehead, or something. Claire quickly pointed out that, even if he didn’t catch the funny way we spoke, it would have been much easier to just look at the England football shirt she was wearing.
Howard delighted us with the story of how he’d asked everyone’s favourite luckbox, Chris Moneymaker, whether there was a particular poker book he’d read in order to learn the game before becoming world champion. In his best Cletus from The Simpsons accent, he recalled the answer: “I don’t be readin’ no books”.
And then, we were given lollipops.
GBC = Gamblers’ Book Shop. Worst acronym ever?However, they have a podcast now. In fact it’s been going for a few months but as usual I’m playing catch-up. This was a little gem back from episode #2 when celebrity bookshop owner Howard Schwartz (