May, Jesse 1970(?)-

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MAY, Jesse 1970(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1970. Education: Attended University of Chicago for one year.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Professional poker player and writer.

WRITINGS:

Shut Up and Deal (novel), Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1998.

The Gambler's Guide to the World: The Inside Scoop from a Professional Player on Finding the Action, Beating the Odds, and Living It Up around the Globe, Broadway Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Contributor to periodicals, including Poker Digest and High Stakes.

SIDELIGHTS: Author and poker player Jesse May grew up in suburban New Jersey, then studied philosophy at the University of Chicago for a year before he determined that his interests lay in playing poker professionally. He dropped out of school to travel the world, working a variety of jobs and searching out poker games. He has visited such varied locations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, New York, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Israel, and continues to move regularly in his pursuit of the next poker challenge. May mined his poker expertise to write his first novel, Shut Up and Deal, as well as pen The Gambler's Guide to the World: The Inside Scoop from a Professional Player on Finding the Action, Beating the Odds, and Living It Up around the Globe.

Shut Up and Deal is the story of a young slacker, Mickey, who drops out of the traditional world of school and standard employment to pursue a career as a professional poker player. Mickey allows the reader to accompany him on his varied adventures from casinos to card parlors as he travels through the gambling capitols of the world. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a review for the New York Times, commented that "Shut up and Deal is not a romance. It fails to instruct in the narrow sense of the term. But it offers a glimpse of the abyss that threatens every gambler, which is that the chaos will always get you in the end, and that casinos are 'dirty . . . underneath all the glitter.'" A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote that the book's "exclusionary attitude will keep most readers standing 'on the rail,' watching the play without anteing a stake of their own."

The Gambler's Guide to the World combines travel narrative with a guide to the casinos of the world. May provides overviews of each city he includes in the book, followed by useful travel tips on lodging, transportation, currency, restaurants, and entertainment, as well as the requisite reviews of the local casinos.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, June, 1998, Phoebe-Lou Adams, review of Shut Up and Deal, p. 114.

Library Journal, May 1, 1998, Nancy Pearl, review of Shut Up and Deal, p. 139.

New York Times, July 16, 1998, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Glimpses of the Gambler's Abyss," p. E8.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1998, review of Shut Up and Deal, p. 58; November 6, 2000, review of The Gambler's Guide to the World: The Inside Scoop from a Professional Player on Finding the Action, Beating the Odds, and Living It Up around the Globe, p.81.