Is the poker deck stacked against women? Why hasn't a woman ever won the World Series of Poker Main Event in nearly 50 years of competition? What would happen if a female poker pro played a major tournament disguised as a man? Would she improve her chances of making it to the final table? Female poker player and author Sia Layta will answer these questions and more in BLACK WIDOW Poker.More than a simple training manual, BLACK WIDOW Poker explores the gender inequality women experience in male dominated card rooms, and offers them way to win the game in spite of sexism. It is a method of play that earned her the poker nickname: BLACK WIDOW.Packed with new Texas Hold'em strategies anyone can use, and innovative gender-centric lines of attack, BLACK WIDOW Poker shows women how to beat men at their own game.

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet. Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!

When cub reporter Ruby falls for her boss, all bets are off. He's a challenge, he's her editor, and he wants her to stop being quippy and clever and become the writer--and the woman--he knows she can be. But what happens when she realizes Mr. Right has his own unresolved past? A bestseller in hardcover.

Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether. McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it. Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.

In September 2006, Victoria Coren won the European Poker Championship, and with it a cool one million dollars. Overnight, she became one of the world's most famous players. But how did she do it? In For Richer, For Poorer, Victoria Coren's long-awaited poker memoir, she answers this question. It is an intensely honest story of twenty years of obsession, of highs and lows, wins and losses, friendships, power plays, loneliness and addiction. Coren takes us from the grimy underworld of illegal cash games to the high glamour of Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, vividly capturing the incredible excitement of a poker match and getting to the heart of why poker has become the world's most popular card game. It is a razor-sharp, accessible, entertaining, and intensely gripping story.

The shocking and affecting memoir from a gold-star widow searching for the truth behind her Green Beret husband's death, this book bears witness to the true sacrifices made by military families. When Green Beret Bryan Black was killed in an ambush in Niger in 2017, his wife Michelle saw her worst nightmare become a reality. She was left alone with her grief and with two young sons to raise. But what followed Bryan's death was an even more difficult journey for the young widow. After receiving very few details about the attack that took her husband's life, it was up to Michelle to find answers. It became her mission to learn the truth about that day in Niger--and Sacrifice is the result of that mission. In this heartbreaking and revelatory memoir, Michelle uses exclusive interviews with the survivors of her husband's unit, research into the military leadership and accountability, and her own unique vantage point as a gold-star widow to tell a previously unknown story. Sacrifice is both an honest, emotional look inside a military marriage and a searing investigation of the people and decisions at the heart of the US military.

A “highly entertaining” story of a frustrated novelist who finds fame, fortune—and trouble—in the world of online poker (The New York Times Book Review). When Frank Dixon, a writer who has seen his career crash and burn, decides to dabble in online poker, he discovers he has a knack for winning. In this newfound realm, populated by alluring characters—each of them elusive, mysterious, and glamorous—he becomes a smash success: popular, rich, and loved. Going by the name Chip Zero, he sees his fortunes and romantic liaisons thrive in cyberspace while he remains blind to the fact that his real life is sinking. His online success, however, does not come without complications, as he comes to realize that his “virtual” friends and lovers are, in fact, made of flesh and blood—and one rival player is not at all happy that Mr. Zero has taken all his money. “Brazen, often hilarious . . . an illuminating and fully realized story about identity and reputation in the digital age.” —The Washington Post “[A] recklessly funny, sparky satire of our obsession with the virtual world.” —Vanity Fair “Laugh-out-loud . . . There is a certain Everyman quality to Frank . . . whose self-deprecating humor helps carry him through his midlife angst and denial of addiction; you want to wish him well.” —Booklist

Amateur Texas Hold ’Em champ Belinda Cooley, aka “Bee Cool,” has left the desert sands of Vegas for the cool clear waters of the Gulf of Mexico. With her newfound fame she has a free buy-in on a high-profile poker cruise aboard the Sea Gambler. The catch: her manipulative manager (who’s also her twin brother) is driving her crazy, her pesky parents are tagging along, and there’s no place to hide from the throngs seeking poker tips from Bee Cool. If that wasn’t enough to throw off a girl’s game, Belinda soon finds her fellow poker pros disappearing faster than chips on a bad night. It seems someone on board is out to turn the card sharks into shark bait—and Belinda might be next.

The author recounts his experiences on the lucrative Wall Street bond market of the 1980s, where young traders made millions in a very short time, in a humorous account of greed and epic folly.