You've Got to Lose to Win

One night in Austin, 1988

Austin, 1988. Slade Garrick is feeling good. Blacked-out CRX, custom stereo crankin', thirty grand stashed in the secret compartment behind the dash. Tonight he opens his own poker game. The table is ready, the chips are stacked. Then his pager goes off. One phone call later, the one player who guaranteed a full table has bailed, and Bird-Man Poker could fold before the first hand is dealt.

Ten years earlier he was thirteen, wearing corrective shoes, and not allowed to cross the road. His father ruled the house with the Bible and a belt. Then Arnold, the loudest kid on the bus, hustled him out of ten dollars and seventy-five cents flipping quarters, and Slade found a world where the odds did not matter at all.

From the school bus to the pool halls and card rooms of 1980s Austin, Slade grows into the smartest man in any room, and he knows it. Wild Phil, the bookie who becomes the father he never had, knows that is exactly how smart men go broke.

Everything Slade has built comes down to one night. And in this world, you've got to lose to win.

For readers of Walter Tevis's The Hustler and The Color of Money. Texas Sharks, Book 1.