Jim McManus

Jim McManus was certainly in the right place at the right time when he covered the 2000 World Series of Poker. But his success in the Main Event was no case of "Irish luck" ; it was built on the fact he's a pretty good card player. He had been playing the game since his grandparents taught him to play in the Bronx in 1960. Despite being raised in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, Jim proudly calls himself a Chicagoan. While unable to shake off his devotion to the Yankees, he did wear a White Sox cap during his wedding in the Bering Sea in 1992. He wanted to make sure his bride, Jennifer, knew what she was getting into.

Jim has published four novels, including the Carl Sandburg Prize-winning Going to the Sun, as well as a book of stories, two collections of poetry and two books of nonfiction. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Harvard Magazine, and in several anthologies.

In the spring of 2000, Jim went to Las Vegas to cover the WSOP for Harper's. Initially, his assignment was to write about the burgeoning success of women at the WSOP as well as the murder of Ted Binion, the longtime host of the tournament and son of its creator, Benny Binion. But McManus decided he wasn't going to be a passive observer in this drama. Using his entire advance from Harper's, he entered a Main Event satellite and beat out nine other players, including Hasan Habib heads-up, to claim a seat in the Big One. Whether it was the hours McManus had played at home games, the time he spent practicing against a computer program, or his desire to tell the best story he could, McManus clawed and scratched his way to the final table, finishing in fifth place and taking home almost $250K. Hasan, the man he beat in the satellite, finished fourth, and T.J. Cloutier, whose primer on No-Limit Hold 'em Jim had memorized on his way to Las Vegas, finished second, losing with the same A-Q that Jim had lost with when Hasan spiked a 4 on the river.

Jim's article about the event was featured on the cover of Harper's and anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing 2001. The book version, Positively Fifth Street, was a New York Times bestseller and reached No. 2 on Amazon.com, topped only by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Time called Fifth Street "the writer's equivalent of a royal flush," Men's Journal said it was "astounding" and "wildly entertaining," with the New York Times adding "artfully woven," "exhilarating" and "as tension packed as any thriller." Reviewing it for CardPlayer, Daniel Negreanu called it a "masterpiece that should be displayed on all poker fans' bookshelves for years to come."

Although Jim remains a full-time writer and part-time professor, his success as a player wasn't limited to that one tournament. He has since made two other WSOP final tables and had more than two dozen money finishes, including a fifth at the 2006 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, where he was finally knocked out by Chris Ferguson, winner of that fateful WSOP Main Event in 2000.

When he's not working on his history of poker, teaching that subject at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago or competing in live tournaments, Jim McManus can be found playing low- and medium-stakes games on FullTiltPoker.