Swimming with the Sharks (Big Deal - Anthony Holden)

Member Name: bishops

Product:	Big Deal - Anthony Holden
Date:	11/12/00 (233 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gripping for gamblers

Disadvantages: Encouragement that gamblers don't need !

Big Deal is Anthony Holden's story of the year he spent as a professional poker player. Better known as an acclaimed biographer, he recounts his experiences flitting backwards and forwards between Britain and America and beyond, playing cards for frightening sums of money.

This is another one of my now infamous charity shop finds, and I'll cheerfully confess to having been riveted from page 1. When the book opens, the author is already a "keen amateur", with a regular crowd of friends and aquaintances who play weekly, and as many trips to Las Vegas as he can manage or afford. On one Vegas trip, through entering a "qualifying game" which I won't attempt to explain here, he finds himself competing in the Poker World Championships - and finishing in respectable position. This sets him on the road to deciding to spend a year seeing whether he has what it takes to survive solely on poker, with the ultimate aim of arriving back at the World Championships and improving on his finishing position.

The book is full of, I suppose predictable, ups and downs of fortune and financial position. There are two main appeals - the first is the bizarre array of characters who inhabit the pro poker circuit, winning and losing incomprehensible amounts of money without blinking an eye. The other, of course, is the play-by-play accounts of the games. The author does his best to explain poker's rules, terminology and etiquette for the non-player (the glossary of terms is lengthy to say the least !), but realistically you need to start this book with at least a feel for the game if it's going to grip you as it did me.

During the course of his year, Holden finds himself investigating his motivation with a psychiatrist, revered among his British friends for his bravery, and outplayed by his partner when she joins him at the tables ! I won't give away the outcome - in fact it hardly seems important by the end of the
book - but if you're a sad sap like me who visits the occasional casino but daydreams of cigar-smoke-filled rooms and million dollar pots, you'll love this. Highly recommended for gambling fantasists everywhere.

Summary: