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Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player
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, ...more
Paperback, 416 pages
Published
June 15th 2010
by Simon & Schuster
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Journalist 'London' Tony Holden, clearly no slouch at the poker table, is emboldened by a boss placement at the World Series of poker (he finished ninetieth). He decides to see if he can 'run with the big boys,' or become a professional poker player. Thus begins a year of much intercontinental travel and poker play.
Reading this account, it helps to be familiar with card games, especially Texas Hold 'Em; if you're not you might be perplexed or just bored by the play-by-plays of various ...more
Reading this account, it helps to be familiar with card games, especially Texas Hold 'Em; if you're not you might be perplexed or just bored by the play-by-plays of various ...more
I know if I had the name 'Anthony Holden' I would definitely welcome, and perhaps start, the nickname 'Hold'em Holden'. But Anthony Holden, I am not. However, through the course of this book, I learn that we do have a few things in common. A love of Texas Hold 'em mainly, dry as a Martini British wit and a desire to tell Rupert Murdoch where to go. Although I've never worked for The Dirty Digger so I've not had the pleasure of quitting his employ, but I imagine it to be quite satisfying. I ...more
My wife bought this book for my brother-in-law who's very keen on poker but forgot to give it to him.
I've played poker and just about know the rules but I wouldn't have normally chosen this book to read.
It's the story of a former English journalist who tries his luck on the poker circuit for a year.
It's a little predictable (he wins $500, then promptly loses it, repeat) and he flies in and out of Las Vegas a lot.
However, the author includes a little info a...more
I've played poker and just about know the rules but I wouldn't have normally chosen this book to read.
It's the story of a former English journalist who tries his luck on the poker circuit for a year.
It's a little predictable (he wins $500, then promptly loses it, repeat) and he flies in and out of Las Vegas a lot.
However, the author includes a little info a...more
Along with A. Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town (reviewed by me in 2005) and Jim McManus’s Positively Fifth Street (reviewed by me in 2004), Big Deal completes the holy trinity of poker documentaries. Alvarez’s book was more a series of essays and observations about poker in the early to mid 1980’s, with a focus on some of the characters who were successful at the game (especially Stu Ungar). McManus’s book was all about one year at the World Series of Poker, and how it intermingled with a famo...more
I'm giving up on this one after 150 pages. It's not bad or anything, but it's indistinguishable from the two other "autobiography through poker" books I've read in the last few years (Positively Fifth Street and Poker Nation). At least Holden spares us the seemingly obligatory History of Poker chapter. (It was called Poque. They played it in New Orleans. It was five cards, face down, no draw. Blah blah blah. Yaaaaawn. Oh, and do you know why aces and eights is the "dead man's hand...more
After reading the book, you have to wonder if he had set up shop in Vegas and decided to play poker full-time, would he ever has gone back to writing?
I enjoyed reading about the WSOP before the poker boom, when Hellmuth was a brash young kid and Stuey Ungar was still alive.
One of my three favorite gambling books. Great stories here.
fun, although I still can't remember what order the hands go in!
A fascinating read about a man's attempt to make it as a professional poker player.
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