Choir Practice: The Lore and Lure of Poker

Choir Practice is not a how-to-play manual for poker. Rather, author Ray P. McCord explores the origins of the game and how it quickly became the modern American phenomenon it is today. He considers the complex cultural conditions that helped make the game one of the most popular recreational and professional games in our culture. Is poker really gambling-or is it something else? Choir Practice is a distillation of McCord's fond remembrances from more than seventy-five years of intermittent poker play, bolstered by his intensive research into the subject. Primarily it discusses poker in general with an emphasis toward the most popular game of penny-ante hi-lo, McCord's personal preference. It began as a paper written for a class three decades ago and has since evolved into a more focused study of the game, the sociological impact of the game, and a study of the people who play it.