The Cincinnati Kid

The Cincinnati Kid, first published in 1963 (and made into a feature film starring Steve McQueen in 1965), is a gritty novel of smoky back-rooms and centered on a young card-shark ("The Kid") who eventually finds himself in a stud-poker game against the undisputed master ("The Man"). From the first edition dust-jacket: "By the time he was twenty-one, he was a full rambling-gambling man, a three river man. . . . From Jolly's Omaha Card Club on the Missouri, to Spriigi's Emporium in Wheeling on the Ohio, down to Big Nig's in Memphis on the Mississippi, he was known as The Cincinnati Kid, a comer, with a way about him."