The convenience of playing these games this way can’t be discounted. I wonder what will happen when things return to some semblance of normalcy. Most of these guys have no worries on that front, but even so, there are guys who are losing several thousand dollars every week. But now they’re running the game online four or five times a week, rake free, and I’ve been playing in it two or three nights a week. Back then it would be on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, and because it was so popular, I usually could only get a seat in it once a week. There’s a 5-10 NLHE home game that I was playing before the pandemic. I haven’t played in a live game since last March. I think it’s insanity, and I certainly won’t be playing in those games until we’ve gotten to the other side of this and I’ve been vaccinated along with the majority of the population. PETER ALSON: Incredibly, there are live underground poker games in New York going on during the pandemic. STADIUM JOURNEY: What’s the pandemic poker scene like these days in New York City or elsewhere for that matter? Are people actually playing in person? So writing this novel, which took me a very long time, has probably been the most satisfying creative experience I’ve ever had. But fiction is what first drew me in, as a reader, and as a writer it’s always been my highest aspiration. Of course, on bad days writing fiction, when nothing is coming, you don’t have real events to lean on and show you the way forward. It was liberating to be able make stuff up and just let myself go. In all my previous work, which was all nonfiction and memoir, I’d been constrained to some extent by what had actually happened. The other thing I wanted to explore is the role of luck in life and in art, and at the same time poke some fun at the art world, which in its way is as much of a game as poker. I wanted to tell a story about a marriage under pressure, what that does to people, and I wanted to delve into the notion of legacy, particularly in the relationship between fathers and sons. After that I just let my imagination run wild, take some of the things I’d experienced and seen over the years and amplify them and give the events a shape. So that was where the novel found its beginnings. Then I got married, myself, and had a kid, and suddenly I understood in a first-hand way what he’d been going through. I had learned a lot from him, so it was hard seeing his game suffer. I had been making money in those games, myself. It was painful for me to watch his struggle.
He was probably one of the two or three best players in the city, but then he got married and had a couple of kids pretty quickly, and the pressure of supporting a family by playing a game that is sometimes cruel and unfair, really got to him. PETER ALSON: The inspiration came from watching a friend of mine, a talented painter, who had been making his rent money by playing poker in the underground clubs in New York City. STADIUM JOURNEY: How does The Only Way To Play It come about? What are the pros and cons of fiction? Alson took a few minutes to discuss his first novel, his consulting work on the television show Billions, his uncle, Norman Mailer and much more.
In his latest work, his first novel, The Only Way To Play It, Alson navigates through familiar territory: the underground New York City poker scene. Alson has also co-written a biography on poker legend Stuey Unger and a memoir with boxing great Teddy Atlas.
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Peter Alson, has written several books, including Take Me to the River: A Wayward and Perilous Journey to the World Series of Poker and Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie: A True Tale of Love and the Vig, which was just reissued.
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