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Original Title:	Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas
ISBN:	0812974387 (ISBN13: 9780812974386)
Edition Language:	English

Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas

David Kushner

Paperback | Pages: 240 pages

Rating: 3.7 | 253 Users | 33 Reviews

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Title	:	Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas
Author	:	David Kushner
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 240 pages
Published	:	August 29th 2006 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 2005)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Biography. Sports and Games. Games

Explanation To Books Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas

If you think a gang of real-life geeks can’t take on the world and win big . . . think again. And whatever you do, don’t sit down across a gaming table from Jon Finkel, better known as Jonny Magic. Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids is his amazing true story: the jaw-dropping, zero-to-hero chronicle of a fat, friendless boy from New Jersey who found his edge in a game of cards–and turned it into a fortune.

The ultimate bully-magnet, Finkel grew up heckled and hazed until destiny came in the form of a trading-card game called Magic: The Gathering. Magic exploded from nerdy obsession to mainstream mania and made the teenage Finkel an ultracool world champion.

Once transformed, this young shark stormed poker rooms from the underground clubs of New York City to the high-stakes tables online, until he landed on the largest card-counting blackjack team in the country. Taking Vegas for millions, Finkel’s squad of brainy gamers became the biggest players in town. Then they took on the town’s biggest game, the World Series of Poker, and walked away with more than $3.5 million.

Thrilling, edgy, and ferociously feel-good, the odyssey of these underdogs-turned-overlords is the stuff of pop-culture legend. And David Kushner, acclaimed author of Masters of Doom, masterfully deals out the outrageous details while bringing to life a cast of characters rife with aces, kings, knaves . . . and more than a few jokers. If you secretly believe every player has his day, you’re right. Here’s the proof.


From the Hardcover edition.

Rating Based On Books Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas

Ratings: 3.7 From 253 Users | 33 Reviews

Column Based On Books Jonny Magic & the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas

It's about my cousin. How can it NOT be on my list??

This book was pretty disappointing. I'm a fan of games in general and Magic: The Gathering and Poker in particular. The true story of a geeky outcast who rises to the ranks of professional Magic, then takes on Vegas as a professional poker player, then card counter, should be a fun and fascinating read. But Kushner's cheesy prose and superficial coverage of events falls flat. The target audience should be card players who understand the games reasonably well, but Kushner goes for the lowest

Like many books that address subcultures, this one was quite crap. It wasn't really really crap, like many things written about subcultures, and it wasn't totally awesome like Stefan Fatsis's book on Scrabble. The author was somewhat sympathetic towards the players, but his descriptions of the play were still quite poor, and he tended to want to allocate all the characters to stereotypes. Geek lives are just as nuanced and meaningful as any other human's, and I didn't feel that that came through

So some might say I'm little bit biased, since I am the subject of the book and all. But to be honest, I found the subject fascinating, and the protagonist is a modern hero in the truest sense of the word.

So some might say I'm little bit biased, since I am the subject of the book and all. But to be honest, I found the subject fascinating, and the protagonist is a modern hero in the truest sense of the word.

A satisfying and entertaining underdog story about my favorite game. How could I not give it five stars?

It's an interesting book in the sense that it identifies the correlation between Magic The Gathering and some of the more successful and young poker players who have made Televised final tables in recent years. It's a case study in the transition of one of the early world champions of MTG tournament play into tournament poker via Atlantic City cash games.One caveat I'd point out is that most people even if they are poker playing enthusiasts (or MTG for that matter) probably won't recognize the