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Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player

Rating: 7/10

Cost: $15.00

The Nuts: Well-written and captivating story about a life many want to live.

The Muck: Holden makes it look too easy.

Recommended For: Intermediate players

Anthony Holden penned one of the few good literary poker books. A professional writer-turned-pro-poker-player, who later turns back into a writer, tells a fairly gripping story about how he gave it all up to pursue his hobby.

Definitely not a poker “how to” book, Holden’s autobiographical account takes the reader around the world and across the table from some famous players. He strives to learn more about the game and learn more about himself in the process. He mostly succeeds on both fronts.

Holden includes a noteworthy discussion of the history of poker in the United States, and does equally well in bringing a little color to characters from the past and a few who are still around today.

Holden gets a shaky start at a few home games and from there launches his year-long expedition that takes him to places like Malta and Morocco, with his “career” culminating at the World Series of Poker.

Since Holden built his real career as an award-winning biographer, he knows what people want to read about other people. Holden is not without an ego, but he knows this and shares his straightforward candor with the reader.

Perhaps this book is so well written that it deserves a word of caution: Don’t Try This At Home! At least Holden tries to suggest this to his readers in the preface to newer editions. Holden also adds an exclamation that poker is “not gambling”! He likens it more to chess, or “a paradigm of life at its most intense.”

Well, for a guy who finishes how he does at the end of the book (No, I won’t give it away), anyone should be hard-pressed not to call poker gambling.

The book carries a sense of nostalgia because it was written during a time when poker was still played face to face, and the “boom” had not quite hit the world, nor had online poker.

People who mistakenly read this book and go live their “similar” dream will find it’s a different story now, and a much harder one at that. Perhaps this makes the book even more worthwhile, because it is both historical and entertaining.

As with most poker literature, read this book as a break from the countless volumes of theory and instruction. Sit back, enjoy his stories, and you’ll be pumped up to play in some big tournaments.

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