Books: Deal the Cards

DEALER'S CHOICE: THE WORLD'S GREATEST POKER STORIES (277 pp.)—Edited by Jerry D. Lewis—A. S. Barnes ($3.95).

For the most part, this anthology of "Americas second most popular after-dark activity" consists of short classics—from Stephen Crane's A Poker Game to John OHara's Where's the Game? —still worth more than a white chip. Some of them, though, seem to begin after the deal has started and end before the reader gets his fifth card. Best of the lot, perhaps, is Somerset Maugham's Straight Flush, a poignant tale of a man burdened with failing eyesight, and not idiocy, who chose the one time in 64,973...

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