Finding himself at a not-quite-legal gambling event in Florida when the event itself was held up by armed bandits, Thomas Austin "Amarillo Slim" Preston, Jr., like the other patrons of this event, was forced to lie down on the floor at gun point. His assailants, recognizing this true celebrity, told him he alone could keep his valuables. However, concerned as to how this would appear to his fellow victims, Slim insisted he be robbed as well. A little more than a week later, his money and valuables were anonymously returned to him by his robbers. Call it respect, or perhaps more than a little fear, but someone would have to be a pretty remarkable person to elicit this sort of behavior from total strangers under any circumstances. This is the sort of person whose life story warrants being told.
There are few people, if there's anyone at all, who is as widely known in gambling circles as Amarillo Slim Preston. A snooker and pool hustler, one-time book maker, proposition bettor, road gambler, and world-class poker player. He has won bets by broad jumping on a golf course, white water rafting down an impossible river, winning the main event at the World Series of Poker, and riding a camel through a casino in Marrakech, and by listing these events I'm just scratching the surface of his illustrious career. As Slim himself says, "If there's anything I'll argue about, I'll either bet on it or shut up," and his win percentage has been impressive by anyone's standards.
In his autobiography, co-written by noted gambling author Greg Dinkin, Slim walks the reader through his life, from his birth in small-town Arkansas, through his upbringing, his service in the US military, his gambling exploits on the road, his celebrity after winning at the WSOP, to his current, "milder" years. Since winning the WSOP, Slim has dodged death numerous times, including a kidnaping by a Colombian drug lord and most recently after being crushed by his horse in a wilderness accident. There's little that the author hasn't done in his life, and his exploits are rightly the stuff of legend.
This book is written in a smooth, conversational style that perfectly captures the folksy tone of its subject. Despite his colloquial style, however, Amarillo Slim is nobody's fool. Beneath the famous Stetson is a razor sharp mind, and while he may be more known for wit than wisdom, there is plenty of both in his book. Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People may not provide a great deal of direct gambling advice, but deep down there is an abundance of real experience that should work its way into the heads of attentive readers.
All that is beside the point of the book, of course. More than anything else, Slim's stories are entertaining, and to his credit, not all of the stories he tells wind up with the protagonist smelling like a rose. Because of this the human aspects of Amarillo Slim make him an even more compelling character than the man of legend. In this book there are just so many amazing stories that there is no way that any but Slim's closest friends, and perhaps even they, will have heard them all. While some of the stories differ in detail between this volume and other sources, for example, Slim's first book, the out-of-print Play Poker to Win, this is in no way a criticism of the book. I have no doubt that as hard as it might be to believe, every one of these adventures and misadventures did, indeed, happen to our hero, even if every detail may not be perfectly recollected by a well-travelled mind.
The bottom line is that this book is outrageously entertaining, just as much as anyone who knows of its subject could possibly expect. Each story is more amazing than the next, and the only disappointment comes when the final page is turned. I would expect that anyone with even a passing interest in one of the gambling world's most colorful characters would greatly enjoy this book. Amarillo Slim and Greg Dinkin have done us all a marvelous service by capturing these amazing escapades in print for generations to come.
Amarillo Slim Preston is arguably the most compelling personality in the world of gambling, and his memoir, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, is every bit as entertaining as we might hope. This book is an exhaustive chronicle spotlighting its subject throughout good times and bad on some of the most amazing adventures I've every read. I fully expect anyone who has any interest in the gambling world to be thoroughly engrossed by this remarkable memoir. I highly recommend this book.
Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.
Click here to return to the index of reviews.