Fading Hearts on the River
A Life in High-Stakes Poker
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
Centered around multi–million dollar stakes and a series of nationally televised poker tournaments, Fading Hearts on the River offers a story of odds—the odds of a newborn surviving severe jaundice, the odds of Congress passing a law that renders one's online gambling income inaccessible, the odds of drawing the right card on the turn or the river. In this tale of fatherhood and worldy success, Haxton follows his son Isaac's unlikely career as a poker player, the nervous father often sitting on the sidelines with his fingers crossed or staring at a casino monitor while Isaac wins more in one hand of play than Haxton has earned from all his books of poetry combined.
In this deftly crafted story Haxton explores the propensity for abstraction, logic, and memory all good poets and poker players share, all the while taking readers on a rollicking tour of complex, intertwined topics, ranging from game theory and financial strategies, to medical mysteries and lost love, to chess, Magic cards, and Texas Hold ‘em. Guided by the through–line of a father's love and admiration for his talented son, Fading Hearts delivers a unique perspective on professional gambling and one family's experience playing the odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet and professor Haxton (Nakedness, Death, and the Number Zero) delivers a thoughtful and gripping memoir of life with his son, Isaac, who takes time off from his undergraduate studies in computer science to pursue a living as a player in the high stakes world of professional poker playing. Beginning in Las Vegas, where Isaac is in the finals of the World Poker Tour, and ending with Isaac's marriage to his longtime girlfriend, Haxton weaves the events leading to his son's poker winnings with heartfelt accounts of various earlier times, including Isaac's youth and his early infatuation. Haxton nicely touches on the mathematics and psychology of poker playing. While recognizing at all times that playing poker in many ways "can be a difficult way of life," his gift for the poetic and lyrical shines, as he presents highly sympathetic descriptions of the denizens of casinos around the world where the various tournaments he describes are located.
