Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids

If we’re not done with poker quite yet, at least we’ve got guys like David Kushner who have the imagination to use the game to talk about something larger than flops, five-card stud, and getting beat on the river. His latest book is a breezy, unpretentious take on Jon ”Jonny Magic” Finkel — a fat New Jersey kid who got hooked on Magic: The Gathering and turned his childhood obsession into millions by counting cards at casinos, winning online poker tourneys, and coming up with advanced analyses of sports betting. Poker may be the sell, but Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids is still a classic story about a nerd who got the crap beaten out of him in high school but came out on top in the end. And how could a former high school nerd give that anything less than a B?