The extraordinary life of the best poker player who ever lived When Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar took his first World Series of Poker title, one journalist asked him what he would do with the money. His answer: 'Gamble it'. Stuey grew up among the hoodlums and wiseguys of New York's Lower East Side. A pint-sized high-school drop out who never worked a day in his life, never had a bank account or paid a penny in taxes, he lived to gamble and became the world's most feared card player. From the multi-million dollar fortune he won and lost, the addictions that consumed him, and one of the greatest phoenix-from-the-ashes comebacks of all time, this is the story of a Las Vegas legend.

An overeducated underachiever, Peter Alson spent his post-college decades doing his best not to grow up. But having just turned fifty, this rambling-gambling bachelor decides it's time to settle down. So he pops the question to his longtime girlfriend, then hatches a plan to pay for their wedding -- involving poker and a trip to Las Vegas. Boarding a plane bound for the neon desert and the biggest game in town -- the 2005 World Series of Poker -- this inveterate gambler and bad boy stares down his past and his future while competing for over $56 million in prize money.

"Take Me to the River" is a hilarious, wrenching, full-tilt Vegas exploration of one man's obsession with poker and the lessons it has to offer -- about probability and luck, good fortune and bad, patience, perseverance, and -- most fitting for a man with marriage in his near future -- commitment.