Word: kidding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Cincinnati Kid wants to be The Man. From The Shooter, patriarch of the rambling-gambling fraternity, he learns that he may get his chance to become number...
...Well," The Kid said, "I gotta know...
...Cincinnati Kid has a jarring impact. Jessup describes the men and The Game in sharp, crackling prose; there is hardly a word of excess verbiage in his writing. Jessup's novel is one of those rare books you want to read again and again, to re-experience the tension of the story, and the starkness of his language and dialogue...
Before the Kid's showdown with Lancey, a veteran gambler warns him: "don' mess 'around with The Man jest yit kid. Jest learn a little mo' poker. Right now, Lancey'd take skin and leave you dried out like a sucked orange in the sun, juice all gone." Ready or not, the Kid won't back out, and he and Lancey play in a plush St. Louis hotel room. "Once you go in," the Shooter says, "you can't quite. Two of you go in and only one of you can come out, 'cause there ain't room...
...Game drags on through the night and the next day. On the second night, in a single $15,000 pot, Lancey breaks The Kid, with a straight flush to a full house queens up. (This seems to me the only implausible part of the book. Lancey bets $2,000 after the third card, holding a seven-eight-jack of hearts. You play like that, brother, and you ain't gonna be The Man very long...