Covering poker's world championship event and the many characters it draws, this work compiles some of the strangest things said about the game and presents a detailed argument that this past yeat was the strangest year in poker yet. Sharpe's thorough excavations through long-forgotten archives of the game have uncovered the first-ever poker cheat who was literally making a spectacle of himself in 1829; has unearthed a game which reportedly lasted for 24 years, exposed the U.S. President who gambled away the White House crockery, and discovered that a certain member of the Royal family was very much amused by poker. The poker world is divided between those who believe the game to be the most skilled contest ever devised, and those who believe that success in the game relies on pure luck, and both are given attention here. This book will appeal to the novice player who can barely tell his flops from his nuts, as well as to poker connoisseurs.