Download or read book Calling Her Bluff written by Kaia Danielle and published by Entangled: Lovestruck. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romance author Kamaria Wilson came to Las Vegas with nothing to lose. A one-night stand with a hot guy is just the distraction she needs...until she realizes she wound up in the wrong man’s bed. And now they’re stuck together. After his hot one-night stand goes MIA, security specialist Jack Aldirisi is sure he’ll never see her again. But when he’s called in to the casino for an unexpected “special assignment,” Lady Luck smiles down on Jack. For the rest of the weekend, he’ll be by his missing woman’s side. She insists their powerful connection is nothing more than sex. He begs to differ. And this time, he’s calling her bluff. The complete 'What Happens in Vegas’ series (All standalones which can be read out of order) Tempting Her Best Friend by Gina L. Maxwell The Makeover Mistake by Kathy Lyons A Change of Plans by Robyn Thomas Masquerading with the CEO by Dawn Chartier Just One Reason by Brooklyn Skye Tamed by the Outlaw by Michelle Sharp Tempted by Mr. Write by Sara Hantz Gambling on the Bodyguard by Sarah Ballance Seducing Seven by M.K. Meredith Calling Her Bluff by Kaia Danielle Her Secret Lover by Robin Covington Betting on the Wrong Brother by Cathryn Fox Accidentally in Love with the Biker by Teri Anne Stanley Loving the Odds by Stefanie London

Download or read book The Vegas Bluff A Sinful Christmas Romance written by Ajme Williams and published by Ajme Williams. This book was released on with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I was right all along… Amelia was just like all the other women I never wanted to see again after spending one night together. In fact, she turned out to be worse than them. Let me backup… It’s true when they say that Las Vegas should be burned to the ground. I’d burn it myself after ending up married to a woman and having no memory of it. Was Amelia playing me? Judging by the way she was sweating and yelling in shock, I didn’t think so. My heart lied to me and begged me to believe in her authenticity. You know, maybe she wasn’t after my money or prestige, after all. Maybe her gorgeous body contained a heart that I could actually love. Boy was I wrong. Instead of finding an honest heart, I discovered a nasty secret that made me want to rewind time and undo the moments I’d spent with her inside the bedroom. She was a devil in human form. A devil that was now wearing a wedding ring… and carrying my baby. Could that Christmas Eve bring me any more surprises? ‘The Vegas Bluff’ is everything Christmassy and more. It’s your typical Ajme holiday fix – heart-breaking and heart-warming. Sip on a warm cup of cocoa and let this second chance, secret pregnancy romance work its magic. This book is a part of the Heart of Hope series but stands alone. Books do not have to be read in order.

Download or read book The Biggest Bluff written by Maria Konnikova and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book “The tale of how Konnikova followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself will have you riveted, first as you learn about her big winnings, and then as she conveys the lessons she learned both about human nature and herself.” —The Washington Post It's true that Maria Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn't even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker. But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like "How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player." She even learned to like Las Vegas. But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.

Download or read book Lost Vegas written by Paul McGuire and published by . This book was released on 2011-05 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker... Las Vegas lures you to shed moral responsibility and piss away your money on indulgences like decadent food, entertainment, gambling, and sex. If you don't enjoy these pastimes, then what's the point of visiting the land of compromised values? Where else can you get a cheap steak, crash a Mexican wedding, get cold-decked in blackjack by a dealer named Dong, play video poker for thirteen straight hours, drink piña coladas out of a plastic coconut, bum a cigarette from an 85-year-old woman with an oxygen tank, speed away to the Spearmint Rhino in a free limo, get rubbed by a former Miss Teen USA, puke in the back of a cab driven by a retired Navy SEAL, snort cheap cocaine in the bathroom at O'Sheas, and then catch a lucky card on the river to crack pocket aces and win a poker tournament? Only in Las Vegas.

Download or read book The Secret History of Las Vegas written by Chris Abani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gritty, riveting, and wholly original murder mystery from PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author and 2015 Edgar Awards winner Chris Abani Before he can retire, Las Vegas detective Salazar is determined to solve a recent spate of murders. When he encounters a pair of conjoined twins with a container of blood near their car, he’s sure he has apprehended the killers, and enlists the help of Dr. Sunil Singh, a South African transplant who specializes in the study of psychopaths. As Sunil tries to crack the twins, the implications of his research grow darker. Haunted by his betrayal of loved ones back home during apartheid, he seeks solace in the love of Asia, a prostitute with hopes of escaping that life. But Sunil’s own troubled past is fast on his heels in the form of a would-be assassin. Suspenseful through the last page, The Secret History of Las Vegas is Chris Abani’s most accomplished work to date, with his trademark visionary prose and a striking compassion for the inner lives of outsiders.

Download or read book Fool Me Once written by Rick Lax and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rick Lax was paranoid to begin with. He saw lies everywhere. And when he saw them, he spoke up. But when his girlfriend gets conned by a violent drug dealer, nothing Rick does seems to help. So what if he misses the next lie? What if spotting them isn't enough to protect against them? What if exposing lies puts him in even more danger? Terrified of being conned himself, Rick bolts for Vegas, deception capital of the world, to learn the game and how to guard against it. Rick meets deceivers of all kinds, from back-alley hustlers and poker pros to the biggest headliners on the Strip. During the course of his unconventional education, which includes passing himself off as an octogenarian, being exposed as a card counter, and picking up a hooker (inadvertently, of course), Rick gets closer to becoming a human lie detector...but at what cost? By the end of Fool Me Once, you'll know why seventh graders make better liars than college students, how to use a handful of rice as a polygraph, and how to bluff a poker pro. But above all, you'll understand why some things in life are a lot worse than being fooled.

Download or read book Bluff written by Michael Kardos and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A down-on-her-luck female magician is drawn into a dangerous criminal scheme in this “hopelessly addictive” thriller (Megan Abbott, Edgar Award–winning author of Give Me Your Hand). At twenty-seven, magician Natalie Webb is already a has-been. A card-trick prodigy, she took first place at the World of Magic competition at eighteen and has never again reached such heights. Now she lives alone in a New Jersey apartment with her pigeons and a pile of overdue bills. In a desperate ploy for extra cash, she follows up on an old offer to write for a glossy magazine and pitches the editor a seductive topic: the art of cheating at cards. But when Natalie meets the perfect subject for her piece—a poker cheat who dazzles at sleight of hand—what begins as a journalistic gamble soon leads her into a dangerous proposition with the highest of stakes . . . “Truly gasp-worthy.” —Library Journal, starred review “[A] delightfully surprising thriller.” —The Florida Times-Union “If you haven’t read Kardos yet, Bluff is the perfect place to start!” —Lisa Scottoline, New York Times–bestselling author of Someone Knows

Download or read book Positively Fifth Street written by James McManus and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether. McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it. Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.

Download or read book Vegas Knockout written by P. Moss and published by CityLife Books. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fight of the century is almost here, and everyone in Sin City feels the buzz. The young journalist on the make. The lovesick con man. The rich man's daughter with a very dirty secret. The king of Vegas night life. A clown who wants waffles. As the frenzy builds and the stakes -- financial, emotional, moral -- get higher, these and other indelible Vegas characters will put everything on the line. In these linked stories, the one and only P Moss shows you a darker, wilder, more uproarious side of this neon paradise.

Download or read book Double Barrel Bluff written by Lou Berney and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edgar Award-nominated and USA Today-bestselling crime writer Lou Berney returns to his critically acclaimed thriller series starring former mob wheelman Shake Bouchon, who finds himself reluctantly involved in a high-stakes hostage rescue, among the mighty temples and shadowy underground of Cambodia. During his years as a wheelman for the Armenian mob in Las Vegas, Shake Bouchon didn’t think of himself as the settling-down type. But now he’s happily married to Gina, the love of his life—and former adversary—in Indiana, of all places. The great thing about Bloomington, for two people with exceptionally checkered pasts, is that everyone is nice and no one knows them. Until the day a brutal Armenian thug who has always hated Shake shows up in his backyard. He demands that Shake help him find the missing mob boss, the pakhan—the dangerous and beautiful Alexandra “Lexy” Ilandryan, who also happens to be Shake’s ex-girlfriend. Shake’s got a lot of history with Lexy, so he reluctantly agrees to travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia, where she was last seen. Once there, he finds himself in a predatory underworld of Cambodian gangsters, mob politics, and opportunistic expats, where the stakes aren’t clear and everyone is looking to gain. With only the help of a clairvoyant hippie and the Armenian thug, Shake becomes involved in a high-stakes negotiation for Lexy that might cost him his own life. But perhaps most threatening of all is Gina’s wrath when she arrives in Cambodia intent on saving Shake from himself—and from all the people trying to kill him. With Lou Berney’s trademark wit, flawless plotting, vibrant locale, and memorable characters, Double Barrel Bluff is another unputdownable, globetrotting adventure.

Download or read book Winner Takes All written by Christina Binkley and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and culture critic Christina Binkley comes an updated edition of her New York Times bestselling account of sex, drugs, and the rise of Las Vegas. With a new prologue on the rise and fall of Steve Wynn. The Strip. Home to some of the world's grandest, flashiest, and most lucrative casino resorts, Las Vegas, with its multitude of attractions, draws millions of tourists from around the world every year. But Sin City hasn't always been booming: modern Vegas exists largely thanks to the extraordinary vision, and remarkable hubris, of three competing business moguls: Kirk Kerkorian, Dr. Gary Loveman, and Steve Wynn. And in the wake of #MeToo revelations, not all empires survive. Having had personal access to all three tycoons, Binkley explains how their audacious efforts to reach the top-and to top one another-shaped the city as it stands. She takes us inside their grandest schemes, their riskiest deals, and the personalities that drove them to their greatest successes, and their most painful defeats. In this updated edition, she reveals the inside story of how Steve Wynn, the winner who took all, ultimately lost everything-twice. Sharp, insightful, and revealing, Winner Takes All is the gripping story of how billions of dollars and the unparalleled drive for power turned dreams into larger-than-life reality. "It's a great drama on the greatest stage. . . Wynn, Kerkorian, and Loveman represent three opposing business personalities, three styles of achieving success. On the Vegas Strip, they're pitted against one another like gladiators, and we've got front-row seats. Kapow!" - bestselling author Po Bronson

Download or read book Wilde Card written by Jenn Stark and published by Elewyn Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never get between a dragon and his gold... When an antique gold show comes to Vegas, Tarot-reading artifact hunter Sara Wilde's job is simple: to steal a set of relics rumored to give their bearers access to an ancient, incredible power. With rumors of a war on magic rustling in the wind, every psychic, mystic, warlock, and witch is being drawn to Sin City...until even a dragon can't stay away. Gods, monsters and fabulous beasts may covet the infamous relics, but no one wants them more than Sara's client--the insufferably arrogant, criminally sensual, and endlessly evasive Magician. And what the Magician wants...

Download or read book Seven Games A Human History written by Oliver Roeder and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

Download or read book Cult Vegas written by Mike Weatherford and published by Huntington Press Inc. This book was released on 2001 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mike Weatherford resurrects the mystique of Vegas's Golden Age--the '60s of history and legend--bringing the hipster legacy to new Vegasphiles. Meet '50s and '60s lounge greats the Treniers, the Mary Kaye Trio, and Louis Prima and Keely Smith; comedy legends Joe E. Lewis, Shecky Greene, and Don Rickles; and Vegas babes Vampira, Lili St. Cyr, Ann-Margret, and Tempest Storm. Weatherford also covers nearly every offbeat movie ever made about Las Vegas, as well as Elvis and Frank's impact on the town. This gorgeous entertainment retrospective is packed with showroom esoterica, descriptions of near-forgotten corners of Vegas cult musicology, odd trivia, and unsung heroes of a bygone era. Cult Vegas chronicles the major moments--the camp, the extreme, the awful--in short, the magic of Las Vegas' half-century run as an entertainment mecca.

Download or read book The Noble Hustle written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet. Look for Colson Whitehead’s bestselling new novel, Harlem Shuffle!

Download or read book The Book of Bluffs written by Mr. Matt Lessinger and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2007-07-31 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert poker player and columnist for Card Player magazine shows how players at every level of the game can master the art of the bluff. Twenty years ago, Mike Caro wrote the book on what to look for in a player’s movements, gestures, and facial expressions—their “tells”—to determine if they were bluffing, and it remains one of the bestselling poker books of all time. But what Caro didn’t do was teach players how to bluff. Enter Matt Lessinger, a professional poker player and columnist, who in THE BOOK OF BLUFFS shows players how to get their opponents to fold—no matter how strong a hand they’ve been dealt. Lessinger reveals how, with the correct timing and artistry, bluffing will allow a player to win while holding an inferior hand—the very essence of poker.

Download or read book Against the Odds written by Mara Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Anna Dawson, and I'm a professional poker player. And I'm good. Very good. But, I also have a little bit of a problem with placing bets on a sporting events. Not so good. Sometimes my little problem becomes a whole lot of trouble and I need to resort to some, shall we say, less than stellar actions to get out of debt. So, I become my alter ego, JoJo, and fix college basketball games. Hey, a victimless crime, no one's the wiser, and it's better than the alternative, which is a drive into the desert with my loan shark and a shovel in the trunk. Although, it has to be said, my loan shark is pretty good looking. I love Vegas, and I love the life I've built, but when one of my friends is murdered, and another one shot at, I know I need to take a serious look at myself. And I need to call in the big guns. Even if that means teaming up with detective Jack Schiller, a man who's dealing with his own problems. But dang, he sure is sexy. Right now I'm just trying to juggle protecting my friends, helping sexy detective Jack while not letting him get too close, and finding a murderer. And, oh yeah, no one can learn about JoJo, or this will be the last hand I'm dealt.