McManus, A north suburban resident, is author of the new book, “Positively Fifth Street,” about the world series of poker.
Your book has been called a valuable addition to the Vegas chronicles of Hunter S. Thompson and A. Alvarez. Why did you want to add to their work? I would add Tony Holden’s “Big Deal” to that. The Alvarez book came out in ’83, and it was only about the 1981 tournament. Great as the book was, there were 19 years of history that hadn’t been covered when I got to Vegas.
You say you’re conscious of small expenses at home, yet found yourself playing for six- and seven-figure sums in Vegas. Is money an abstraction out there? There’s a famous quote that the guy who invented gambling was smart, but the guy who invented poker chips was a genius. Those chips become very seductive. You’re never completely unaware that it’s actual money, but it does become abstracted, once or twice removed from the cash you spend on groceries and car payments. My fourth child had just been born, so my wife and I were feeling our way through our budget. But once you get to Vegas, budgetary concerns drift away.
You divided your personality into Good Jim and Bad Jim. Why? You can’t win money without risking it with a bet. That’s what Bad Jim’s comfortable doing. But you can’t gamble too much; you must protect the size of your stack. It makes sense to think of these impulses as good and bad. Poker players definitely need both.
Your book is a bestseller, plus you won $250,000 at the World Series. Was this a gamble that paid off? Since I won, I can say it was the right call. People think it changed my poker life. It really changed my writing life. I have a two-book contract with arguably the best publisher in New York [Farrar, Strauss & Giroux], and now a pretty good deal with Esquire.
You teach “The Literature, Science and Art of Poker” at the School of the Art Institute. Any future poker writers? I certainly hope so. The students play a tournament, and the amount of chips they start with depends on how well they did on quizzes and papers. The last three years the winner has been a woman.
