In 1988, best-selling biographer Anthony Holden spent one year living the life of a professional poker player. His mesmerizing account of that year went on to become a classic of the genre, an inspiration to innumerable poker players and poker memoirists who followed. Big Deal is his story of days and nights in Las Vegas, Malta, and Morocco, mingling with the greats, sharpening his game, perfecting his repartee, and learning a great deal about himself in the process. Poker, Holden would insist,
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A poker memoir of reasonable quality,
This book falls in the category of poker memoirs. Unlike most such books, usually ghostwritten for a pro with name recognition, Holden writes about his own year-long stint as a pseudo-pro.
I say pseudo-pro because for most of the year Holden is a pro in name only – a professional writer visiting his subject matter. His skills are initially not particularly good, “honed” in a home game played mostly over various wildcard-dense forms of mickey mouse poker. Over the course of the year, he travels to numerous tournaments, loses money in them, gets lucky at blackjack (which he doesn’t seem to realize is a long-run losing game the way he plays it), gets lucky playing over his bankroll in one big pot limit game, and eventually develops enough poker skill to beat satellites and mid-stakes limit games which is a reasonable accomplishment. Using this newfound poker expertise, he recoups his tournament losses & expenses, makes a few bucks, and calls it quits after a disappointing showing in the world series of poker marks the end of his year-long experiment.
Along the way, he collects the usual set of gambling stories, and those are told in entertaining fashion. This book is really a glimpse into professional poker as it existed before the poker boom, and as such is of historic value. It has little to nothing to offer in terms of poker strategy, and similarly little to offer someone considering “going pro” today since the boom changed everything. The book is well written and fun, but for poker players looking for additional depth or useful material, there’s nothing to find.
If you want a real life gambling tale, my review is 4 stars – get it. If you want a memoir with some more useful poker material on the side (and written by a far better player), I suggest you get “Ace on the River” instead.
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|The biographer of royalty plays some cards,
Anthony Holden, the author of many biographies including Olivier and Prince Charles, decides to leave his day job behind for an entire year to become a professional poker player. In his journeys he travels to Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisiana, New York, Malta, Morocco, and the Carribbean to play the best in the world. He sits down with several former World Champions, and he busts a few along the way. Ultimately you learn what goes on inside the head of a man who lives to play the game. He begins and ends his journey at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas at the World Series of Poker.
As a narritive, it is the finest book on poker I have yet to read.
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