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For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker
In September 2006, Victoria Coren won a million dollars on the European Poker Tour. In her long-awaited memoir, she tells the story of that victory, but also of a 20-year obsession with the game. It is a journey which has taken Coren from a secret culture of illegal cash games to the high-stakes glamour of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, and brought with it friendship, laughter, and money, but also loneliness, heartbreak, and defeat. With disarming honesty, Coren lays all of this bare. For Richer, For Poorer also tells the story of the poker revolution. How did this cult card game, populated by a small community of colorful and eccentric players, move from the back streets to the mainstream in a few short years? It is a fascinating story from a trusted insider.
346 pages, Hardcover
First published July 5, 2009
123 people are currently reading
1013 people want to read
About the author
Victoria Coren
6 books53 followersVictoria Elizabeth Coren is an English writer, presenter and professional poker player. Coren writes weekly columns for The Observer and The Guardian newspapers and hosts the BBC Four television quiz show Only Connect.
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April 11, 2023
I can't breathe for how much I loved this book and how happy it made me. I read it in Victoria's snotty voice the whole time and do believe her to be the sexiest person ever. This book made me feel like a woodlouse I just wanted to drink all her lifeblood. I mean, god, what a well-observed life. Victoria leads you briskly and nimbly through the clown house labyrinth of professional poker with insane anecdotes and a passion that is hard to resist as a reader. It's also a literary sort of memoir, with its tight plot (there's a 'B side' where the memoir cuts away to Victoria's present tense, inner monologue as she tries to beat Emad Tahtouh at the EPT finals) and the kind of imagery and motifs found in, I don't know, Murakami or Kundera or some other sad-sack, that shuffles between childhood and nostalgia and existentialism; Victoria pulls off the sad-sack stuff with wit and style. And also vulnerability. There's a steady heartbeat of vulnerability through this book that I cherished most of all - Victoria talks about loneliness, heartbreak, her father's death. No one really stakes vulnerability in celebrity memoirs anymore (and by that, I don't mean, people don't talk about personal tragedy, but rather they don't really write about it in a way that relinquishes control over self-image). What a wonderful book, I ate it up and licked the spoon, incidentally poker is not about money even when that's all it is conceivably about, but even if you knew that I promise, you'll want Victoria to show you why.
July 4, 2017
In real life, in addition to The Laws and The Romance and The Fanfic and Veep [my current show of choice], I am All About Poker.
I have recently moved to a country with no casinos and certainly no card rooms. Back in Blighty, I played live poker several times a week at the same casino. The same dealers and valets and players. The same faces and the same personalities. All the same jokes. The same stories. The rhythmic shuffle of the deck, the symphony of riffling chips. I miss it. I miss everything about it.
Victoria Coren says of nostalgia:
“… nostalgia is a primal emotion, like fear and anger and (maybe) love. It just seems otherwise, because it has a long name and is tricky to define out loud. So you might mistake it for one of those fiddly, sophisticated feelings like scahdenfreude or low self-esteem. But nostalgia is simply, basic, instinctive and it was always there. You can see it on the face of a zoo monkey that once lived in the wild. Or even one that never did. It still knows that it has lost something.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? That’s what I learned at university, in exchange for a stand-up comedy career. Where are those who went before us? The wistful motif echoes through the Anglo-Saxon fragments that kicked off our English course…
One of our first impulses was to feel nostalgic for times we had never seen. And you can feel nostalgic for something even while it is happening.”
I rather feel, in respect of poker, nostalgia is all I have left. I’ll have the odd trip to Florida or New Jersey, and back home, back to the Gala. But, inevitably, it’ll all be different. In choosing to break with it, I’ll have changed it. I played a couple of weeks ago, rusty and jetlagged, surrounded by a particular brand of American, missing my loveable rogues from Birmingham, a lump in my throat.
So, in a fit of self-pity, I’ve decided to cater to my nostalgia, to let it roll over me and to reread, again, and review, the best poker book I’ve ever read. The book that best captures the poker experience as I have lived it.
That said, I’m aware that most of my GR’s friends/followers probably (??) don’t have too much of an interest in poker. So I’ll say upfront: this is a book about poker, but it is not a poker book. Would a poker book muse on nostalgia? I’ve read enough of them, and, I’ll tell you: no, no it would not.
Coren’s book is a clever, funny, irreverent, wry and often moving exploration of her life (I suppose one might call it an autobiography, but I don’t think it’s consistent enough in style for that moniker) but through the lens of poker.
You don’t need to understand poker to read and enjoy this book, although it would help – more on that later.
In 2006, Coren won the European Poker Tour (‘EPT’) London. She was the first female winner on the EPT (about 5% of poker tournament entrants are women). She took home half a million pounds. The narrative structure of this book is chronological through her life - playing with her brother as a gawky teenager, eventually going to a casino (where she was too scared to actually go to the card room and ended up developing a nasty roulette addiction), finding poker players to play home games with, being chosen to go onto one of the first televised poker games and so on. But interspersed the story are little vignettes detailing the crucial poker hands during her journey at EPT London.
The autobiographical elements are fantastic. Coren is amusing and can sketch a scene very well:
“[On first walking in The Vic, where she would become a regular player and, eventually, win the EPT] It doesn’t look like my dream. It doesn’t look like the Desert Inn. It has garish carpet and cheap fruit machines. The air is a soupy smog of B&H cigarette smoke, Middle Eastern aftershave and non-specific Man Smell. Everybody looks miserable. This is not a holiday casino at all.”
She’s also an acute observer of people, which is pretty crucial when you’re talking about poker because it’s packed full of characters and stories of hands and tournaments and This One Time When Rambo Bet Twice Pot on The River and Doc was so Drunk He Didn’t Realise But Actually He’d Filled His Boat.
“I’m fond of Stavros. He’s so glowering, so grumpy, that I laugh just thinking about him. And he’s always terribly polite to me. I suspect that a woman at the poker table plays havoc with Stavros’s brain. He wants my money, like that of any other player, and he certainly bullies me with his bets. But he treats me very gently and carefully. Which, in Stavros terms, means that he doesn’t swear at me or throw his cards at the dealer if I beat him in a hand. In fact, he calls me darling. In a grumpy sort of way.”
I know a Stavros. Mine isn’t called Stavros. We all call him Van Damme, apparently this is because he used to sport a mullet like Van Damme in the early 90s. He’s got a perfectly normal haircut now, but once these things catch on, they stick. It’s even written on his casino membership card. He’s horrid to everyone but me (and the two other lady regulars) and he gets me a cup of tea when he goes to the bar. Coren perfectly captures the personalities of all these individuals. You feel as though you’re in the card room with her:
“Michael, whom I addressed politely as ‘Mr Arnold’ for the first five years I knew him, is such a staple of the card room that he has his own catchphrase. Whenever a player gets up for the night, a croupier is supposed to allocate the seat to a new incumbent. Michael never waits for staff to notice the space; he booms ‘One seat here!’ across the room. Other people do the same thing, now, attempting to mimic Michael’s voice, Scandinavian players, female players, even Steve with the tracheotomy, all can shout ‘One seat here!’ in the style of Michael Arnold. Later, when he gets into a little legal trouble over a chunk of missing money, some wag posts on the internet: ‘One jail cell here!’”
The book isn’t just comical sketches of moments and people though. It’s more than that. The personal elements are beautiful. About her first trip to Vegas as a poker player she says:
”This might be a city of whores, guns, drug addiction and sick gambling, but it feels like we’re six years old and playing hopscotch in the garden all summer.
There is something almost unbearably happy about all of it. Pure pleasure, pure contentment, always curls around a small, sad centre because you known there is nothing permanent. Even as you look at a river, it flows on to something else. A shadow of cloud on the stream changes minute by minute. Even as you hold the water in your cupped palm it trickles out.”
From this description of Vegas she moves onto a memory of Portobello Market with her father. Choosing an item to start a collection, her Father saying it’ll be something to remember him by. It’s poignant and sad and beautiful.
When her father becomes ill, Coren’s fear is palpable. So is her relief when he doesn’t die. The writing of this episode is straightforward but powerful. Punchy sentences, few adjectives, rather like you’re there in the stark waiting room alongside her, reduced to what you know and what you don’t. There is no poetry in those moments. The rest of the book is weaved with the bittersweet thread of the knowledge that, though he recovers from this episode, her Father cannot have long left. Coren never says it, but there is a sense that she believes he lived so he could see her win the EPT. He could see her do something wonderful with her gambling, an aspect of her life which always perplexed him.
And when his death comes, I shed a little tear:
”Autumn frosts have slain July, but it is a bright, sunny October afternoon. The funeral was two days ago.”
As it happens, Coren came into the poker world and slowly became a professional player during the time that poker took off. It is no exaggeration to say that the first decade of the C21st saw a poker boom. Poker is everywhere now. Televised poker, online poker, huge tournaments all around the world. Players broadcast their online play on the internet site Twitch and people are watching, hours and hours of the stuff.
Coren saw it all happen. Observed it all. So, in addition to being a funny and poignant look at her life she also sketches the history of poker’s most crucial period:
”Chris Moneymaker wins the main event [at the World Series of Poker, a competition held yearly in Vegas]! That’s another kind of miracle entirely. Chris Moneymaker! Isn’t that the guy who won his seat on the internet?... an accountant from Tennessee, won his seat in an online satellite! He played a match on the PokerStars website for only forty bucks, and snared a WSOP ticket without even having to leave the house. And then he came out here with the ticket and he’s just won the main even, spinning that $40 in $2.5 million! Not only is he the first world champion to qualify on the internet, he’s the first who really feels like a ‘world champion’ because the entry requirements are, suddenly, so much less restrictive. Truly, anyone can get here.
And his name, his real name, is Moneymaker? I swear to God, this year, someone is writing fairy tales. It gives me a strange tight feeling in my kidneys.”
And her gift for irony gets a proper opportunity to come to the fore:
“It won’t catch on [online poker], Jonas explains. Poker is all about face-to-face interaction. Banter, cash moving back and forth, handling chips and cards, the narrowed stares and the reading of body language… It can’t work as a computer game. Besides, very few people would ever be prepared to type their credit card details into the internet. What are they, straight off the onion boat? Poker players deal in cash, and suspicion.”
On the new breed of poker player after the revolution:
”They are young, Scandinavian, blond, healthy, polite and good at maths… They wear tracksuits, Nike trainers and PokerStars T-shirts. They carry iPods, sunglasses and bottled water. Their nicknames are ‘Grr197(Malmo)’ or ‘xxj21179’. The internet army is here.”
The poker vignettes detailing the hands from the EPT work for me because I know poker and, perhaps more crucially, I know poker terminology. Coren does not try to explain the technical language. She talks about a ‘wheel draw’, ‘gutshot’, ’nuts’, ’tray’, ‘flop’. There’s a glossary at the back, but it’s always annoying having to check those things, and it breaks up the flow. It’s a shame because I suspect it’s lost this book some readers, when, in fact, this really isn’t a book for poker players (or not exclusively anyway). I think these vignettes can be skimmed. The thing to take from it is this: Coren played very well. Trust me.
I want to finish with this. This isn’t a romance, but it reads like one, the HEA guaranteed between Coren and her heroes: the deck, the chips and the game.
“God, I’m glad to be back. I love this place. They will bluff me, beat men, occasionally even fear me, just like any other player, yet I am ‘a lady’ so they mind their language. They want to bankrupt me, destroy me, but not offend me. There is nowhere else like it in the world.”
“With few exceptions, I love anyone who plays poker, who spends their life in the card room, who is hiding from something and chasing something, who knows there may be a better life elsewhere but is a little too frightened to look for it, who lets the invisible clock tick down as they play hand after hand after hand.”
“It is about a magical world. Down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, under the sea, over the rainbow, behind the wardrobe door, there is a place where time stops. A place of Mad Hatters and March Hares, Cheshire Cats and caterpillars on mushrooms, tiny keys and treacle walls.
Like every good fairy take, there is dark magic as well as light. There are mournful Mock Turtles and evil winged monkeys, there are White Witches and West Witches, screaming pig-babies, poisoned Turkish Delight and pools of tears big enough for a mouse to swim in.
But it is all a children’s story. Jump up and follow the White Rabbit, push through the fur coats and the mothballs to reach for the woodwork against the tips of your fingers… and you are through, free, wandering in a universe of the imagination.
Maybe you will be crowned queen in that land. But whenever you slip back into the other world, no time has passed and nothing has changed.
It is about not wanting to die.”
“The game is all about money and nothing to do with money. All you need is a bankroll. You can always find a game to fit. And whoever you are, you will always fit in. In a bubble with the stars, on a Tuesday with the boys, I just want to keep playing, keep playing, keep playing.”
I have to give this five stars because it's very personally relevant to me. It it makes me happy and sad and, of course, nostalgic. Others may not have quite the same reaction, but this is a great book and worth reading.
And it has a HEA, but it’s not quite on the page (perhaps she’ll write a sequel one day). In the life of the EPT (the tour just changed it name to the ‘Pokerstars Championship’) there were over 100 main event tournaments like the one Coren won in 2006. No one ever won one twice. Except Coren. She won EPT San Remo in 2014. The final table streamed live over the web and I watched every single hand. She beat all the internet kids and the crazy Scandis. It was amazing.
Do you want a slice of pure joy? Just watch the video of her final hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6F8Y...
Magic. A proper HEA.
I have recently moved to a country with no casinos and certainly no card rooms. Back in Blighty, I played live poker several times a week at the same casino. The same dealers and valets and players. The same faces and the same personalities. All the same jokes. The same stories. The rhythmic shuffle of the deck, the symphony of riffling chips. I miss it. I miss everything about it.
Victoria Coren says of nostalgia:
“… nostalgia is a primal emotion, like fear and anger and (maybe) love. It just seems otherwise, because it has a long name and is tricky to define out loud. So you might mistake it for one of those fiddly, sophisticated feelings like scahdenfreude or low self-esteem. But nostalgia is simply, basic, instinctive and it was always there. You can see it on the face of a zoo monkey that once lived in the wild. Or even one that never did. It still knows that it has lost something.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? That’s what I learned at university, in exchange for a stand-up comedy career. Where are those who went before us? The wistful motif echoes through the Anglo-Saxon fragments that kicked off our English course…
One of our first impulses was to feel nostalgic for times we had never seen. And you can feel nostalgic for something even while it is happening.”
I rather feel, in respect of poker, nostalgia is all I have left. I’ll have the odd trip to Florida or New Jersey, and back home, back to the Gala. But, inevitably, it’ll all be different. In choosing to break with it, I’ll have changed it. I played a couple of weeks ago, rusty and jetlagged, surrounded by a particular brand of American, missing my loveable rogues from Birmingham, a lump in my throat.
So, in a fit of self-pity, I’ve decided to cater to my nostalgia, to let it roll over me and to reread, again, and review, the best poker book I’ve ever read. The book that best captures the poker experience as I have lived it.
That said, I’m aware that most of my GR’s friends/followers probably (??) don’t have too much of an interest in poker. So I’ll say upfront: this is a book about poker, but it is not a poker book. Would a poker book muse on nostalgia? I’ve read enough of them, and, I’ll tell you: no, no it would not.
Coren’s book is a clever, funny, irreverent, wry and often moving exploration of her life (I suppose one might call it an autobiography, but I don’t think it’s consistent enough in style for that moniker) but through the lens of poker.
You don’t need to understand poker to read and enjoy this book, although it would help – more on that later.
In 2006, Coren won the European Poker Tour (‘EPT’) London. She was the first female winner on the EPT (about 5% of poker tournament entrants are women). She took home half a million pounds. The narrative structure of this book is chronological through her life - playing with her brother as a gawky teenager, eventually going to a casino (where she was too scared to actually go to the card room and ended up developing a nasty roulette addiction), finding poker players to play home games with, being chosen to go onto one of the first televised poker games and so on. But interspersed the story are little vignettes detailing the crucial poker hands during her journey at EPT London.
The autobiographical elements are fantastic. Coren is amusing and can sketch a scene very well:
“[On first walking in The Vic, where she would become a regular player and, eventually, win the EPT] It doesn’t look like my dream. It doesn’t look like the Desert Inn. It has garish carpet and cheap fruit machines. The air is a soupy smog of B&H cigarette smoke, Middle Eastern aftershave and non-specific Man Smell. Everybody looks miserable. This is not a holiday casino at all.”
She’s also an acute observer of people, which is pretty crucial when you’re talking about poker because it’s packed full of characters and stories of hands and tournaments and This One Time When Rambo Bet Twice Pot on The River and Doc was so Drunk He Didn’t Realise But Actually He’d Filled His Boat.
“I’m fond of Stavros. He’s so glowering, so grumpy, that I laugh just thinking about him. And he’s always terribly polite to me. I suspect that a woman at the poker table plays havoc with Stavros’s brain. He wants my money, like that of any other player, and he certainly bullies me with his bets. But he treats me very gently and carefully. Which, in Stavros terms, means that he doesn’t swear at me or throw his cards at the dealer if I beat him in a hand. In fact, he calls me darling. In a grumpy sort of way.”
I know a Stavros. Mine isn’t called Stavros. We all call him Van Damme, apparently this is because he used to sport a mullet like Van Damme in the early 90s. He’s got a perfectly normal haircut now, but once these things catch on, they stick. It’s even written on his casino membership card. He’s horrid to everyone but me (and the two other lady regulars) and he gets me a cup of tea when he goes to the bar. Coren perfectly captures the personalities of all these individuals. You feel as though you’re in the card room with her:
“Michael, whom I addressed politely as ‘Mr Arnold’ for the first five years I knew him, is such a staple of the card room that he has his own catchphrase. Whenever a player gets up for the night, a croupier is supposed to allocate the seat to a new incumbent. Michael never waits for staff to notice the space; he booms ‘One seat here!’ across the room. Other people do the same thing, now, attempting to mimic Michael’s voice, Scandinavian players, female players, even Steve with the tracheotomy, all can shout ‘One seat here!’ in the style of Michael Arnold. Later, when he gets into a little legal trouble over a chunk of missing money, some wag posts on the internet: ‘One jail cell here!’”
The book isn’t just comical sketches of moments and people though. It’s more than that. The personal elements are beautiful. About her first trip to Vegas as a poker player she says:
”This might be a city of whores, guns, drug addiction and sick gambling, but it feels like we’re six years old and playing hopscotch in the garden all summer.
There is something almost unbearably happy about all of it. Pure pleasure, pure contentment, always curls around a small, sad centre because you known there is nothing permanent. Even as you look at a river, it flows on to something else. A shadow of cloud on the stream changes minute by minute. Even as you hold the water in your cupped palm it trickles out.”
From this description of Vegas she moves onto a memory of Portobello Market with her father. Choosing an item to start a collection, her Father saying it’ll be something to remember him by. It’s poignant and sad and beautiful.
When her father becomes ill, Coren’s fear is palpable. So is her relief when he doesn’t die. The writing of this episode is straightforward but powerful. Punchy sentences, few adjectives, rather like you’re there in the stark waiting room alongside her, reduced to what you know and what you don’t. There is no poetry in those moments. The rest of the book is weaved with the bittersweet thread of the knowledge that, though he recovers from this episode, her Father cannot have long left. Coren never says it, but there is a sense that she believes he lived so he could see her win the EPT. He could see her do something wonderful with her gambling, an aspect of her life which always perplexed him.
And when his death comes, I shed a little tear:
”Autumn frosts have slain July, but it is a bright, sunny October afternoon. The funeral was two days ago.”
As it happens, Coren came into the poker world and slowly became a professional player during the time that poker took off. It is no exaggeration to say that the first decade of the C21st saw a poker boom. Poker is everywhere now. Televised poker, online poker, huge tournaments all around the world. Players broadcast their online play on the internet site Twitch and people are watching, hours and hours of the stuff.
Coren saw it all happen. Observed it all. So, in addition to being a funny and poignant look at her life she also sketches the history of poker’s most crucial period:
”Chris Moneymaker wins the main event [at the World Series of Poker, a competition held yearly in Vegas]! That’s another kind of miracle entirely. Chris Moneymaker! Isn’t that the guy who won his seat on the internet?... an accountant from Tennessee, won his seat in an online satellite! He played a match on the PokerStars website for only forty bucks, and snared a WSOP ticket without even having to leave the house. And then he came out here with the ticket and he’s just won the main even, spinning that $40 in $2.5 million! Not only is he the first world champion to qualify on the internet, he’s the first who really feels like a ‘world champion’ because the entry requirements are, suddenly, so much less restrictive. Truly, anyone can get here.
And his name, his real name, is Moneymaker? I swear to God, this year, someone is writing fairy tales. It gives me a strange tight feeling in my kidneys.”
And her gift for irony gets a proper opportunity to come to the fore:
“It won’t catch on [online poker], Jonas explains. Poker is all about face-to-face interaction. Banter, cash moving back and forth, handling chips and cards, the narrowed stares and the reading of body language… It can’t work as a computer game. Besides, very few people would ever be prepared to type their credit card details into the internet. What are they, straight off the onion boat? Poker players deal in cash, and suspicion.”
On the new breed of poker player after the revolution:
”They are young, Scandinavian, blond, healthy, polite and good at maths… They wear tracksuits, Nike trainers and PokerStars T-shirts. They carry iPods, sunglasses and bottled water. Their nicknames are ‘Grr197(Malmo)’ or ‘xxj21179’. The internet army is here.”
The poker vignettes detailing the hands from the EPT work for me because I know poker and, perhaps more crucially, I know poker terminology. Coren does not try to explain the technical language. She talks about a ‘wheel draw’, ‘gutshot’, ’nuts’, ’tray’, ‘flop’. There’s a glossary at the back, but it’s always annoying having to check those things, and it breaks up the flow. It’s a shame because I suspect it’s lost this book some readers, when, in fact, this really isn’t a book for poker players (or not exclusively anyway). I think these vignettes can be skimmed. The thing to take from it is this: Coren played very well. Trust me.
I want to finish with this. This isn’t a romance, but it reads like one, the HEA guaranteed between Coren and her heroes: the deck, the chips and the game.
“God, I’m glad to be back. I love this place. They will bluff me, beat men, occasionally even fear me, just like any other player, yet I am ‘a lady’ so they mind their language. They want to bankrupt me, destroy me, but not offend me. There is nowhere else like it in the world.”
“With few exceptions, I love anyone who plays poker, who spends their life in the card room, who is hiding from something and chasing something, who knows there may be a better life elsewhere but is a little too frightened to look for it, who lets the invisible clock tick down as they play hand after hand after hand.”
“It is about a magical world. Down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, under the sea, over the rainbow, behind the wardrobe door, there is a place where time stops. A place of Mad Hatters and March Hares, Cheshire Cats and caterpillars on mushrooms, tiny keys and treacle walls.
Like every good fairy take, there is dark magic as well as light. There are mournful Mock Turtles and evil winged monkeys, there are White Witches and West Witches, screaming pig-babies, poisoned Turkish Delight and pools of tears big enough for a mouse to swim in.
But it is all a children’s story. Jump up and follow the White Rabbit, push through the fur coats and the mothballs to reach for the woodwork against the tips of your fingers… and you are through, free, wandering in a universe of the imagination.
Maybe you will be crowned queen in that land. But whenever you slip back into the other world, no time has passed and nothing has changed.
It is about not wanting to die.”
“The game is all about money and nothing to do with money. All you need is a bankroll. You can always find a game to fit. And whoever you are, you will always fit in. In a bubble with the stars, on a Tuesday with the boys, I just want to keep playing, keep playing, keep playing.”
I have to give this five stars because it's very personally relevant to me. It it makes me happy and sad and, of course, nostalgic. Others may not have quite the same reaction, but this is a great book and worth reading.
And it has a HEA, but it’s not quite on the page (perhaps she’ll write a sequel one day). In the life of the EPT (the tour just changed it name to the ‘Pokerstars Championship’) there were over 100 main event tournaments like the one Coren won in 2006. No one ever won one twice. Except Coren. She won EPT San Remo in 2014. The final table streamed live over the web and I watched every single hand. She beat all the internet kids and the crazy Scandis. It was amazing.
Do you want a slice of pure joy? Just watch the video of her final hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6F8Y...
Magic. A proper HEA.
August 22, 2013
Let's face it, there are a lot of rubbish poker books out there. I've wasted hard-won cash on some real stinkers, and have come to view certain types of titles with a degree of caution. Poker players prone to hyperbole? Perish the thought.
The promise of 'secrets' or a 'system' is a red flag (although 'super-system' is okay provided it's written by Doyle Brunson). So too is the suggestion that you can 'earn a living' or somehow 'beat the odds' (each being, as far as I'm concerned, the functional equivalent of an invitation to bang your head repeatedly against a brick wall).
But a 'love affair with poker'? Written by a British woman? Fifty shades, wot?
Come to think of it, though, I was vaguely aware of Victoria Coren, daughter of the late (and brilliant) Alan Coren. It seems that she's actually won a lot of money playing poker. She turns up on television now and then. She's quite pleasant, really – with accent, manners and a sense of humor that seem an agreeable distillation of those of all the lovely middle-class mums at my children's primary school. (And what could be more agreeable than that?)
She's written an excellent poker book too, on several counts:
For one thing, there's the writing itself. The art. VC's got the nuts here. Her wit, originality and turn of phrase sparkle. She's erudite – learned, even - but not pretentious. Her deft touch and subtlety animate even the prosaic: “Ah Luton,” she writes. “Spiritual home of the hat trade.” She makes it look easy. Hands-down, five stars for art.
Then there's the poker stuff. Four stars for this, and possibly even a lingering glance in the direction of five. Ordinarily, poker players' written accounts of hands they've played are so dry and stilted that only the most ardent fan can be bothered to try to make head or tail of them. VC's, however, are compelling and fun. You almost feel as if you're sitting there with her, trying to read Emad Tahtouh or agonizing over how to play the awkward pair of jacks (the Botox hand, I like that).
I also like her sentimental attachment to the 7,4 unsuited. This is a hand that I would automatically fold (or 'pass' as she would say). Maybe I should be giving it a second look - low-key recreational player that I am, I'll happily fool around with this kind of thing.
As a memoir, I put the book at three stars. Her sketches of people she meets and the characters at her poker club are solid and fun to read, as are the parts about her father. I'm less certain, though, about some of her internal musings. At times they verge on the high-strung and over-wrought, while at other times she papers things over with breezy platitudes. Genuine candor, or a poker pro's stage-managed 'secrets'? I don't know. Other readers will make up their own minds.
There is some repetition in the book, which suggests that bits of the material may have been recycled and re-purposed. If that's true it didn't particularly matter to me, since I'd seen none of it before.
One niggling, very minor irritant is VC's frequent mention of people borrowing money for gambling. For instance, she recounts an episode in Las Vegas, where she's burned through her entire stash and is on the phone with her bank in London trying to arrange an extension to her overdraft. She presents it as if that's the sort of thing that inevitably happens to the professional gambler and concludes, with only slight irony, that she will simply play her way out of the debt.
Had I written that scene I would have dropped in a pretty heavy disclaimer: There are no circumstances whatsoever under which anyone, even a supposed professional, should gamble with borrowed money. It is not cute. It is not clever or cool. It's the moral equivalent of getting involved with methamphetamine. To use the lawyer's term of art, it is fucking moronic. You gamble only with money you can afford to lose. Got it? Good. Now run along kids, and remember that roulette and blackjack are for mugs. Poker is the game.
Overall, a well-written and thoroughly entertaining book. Highly recommended.
The promise of 'secrets' or a 'system' is a red flag (although 'super-system' is okay provided it's written by Doyle Brunson). So too is the suggestion that you can 'earn a living' or somehow 'beat the odds' (each being, as far as I'm concerned, the functional equivalent of an invitation to bang your head repeatedly against a brick wall).
But a 'love affair with poker'? Written by a British woman? Fifty shades, wot?
Come to think of it, though, I was vaguely aware of Victoria Coren, daughter of the late (and brilliant) Alan Coren. It seems that she's actually won a lot of money playing poker. She turns up on television now and then. She's quite pleasant, really – with accent, manners and a sense of humor that seem an agreeable distillation of those of all the lovely middle-class mums at my children's primary school. (And what could be more agreeable than that?)
She's written an excellent poker book too, on several counts:
For one thing, there's the writing itself. The art. VC's got the nuts here. Her wit, originality and turn of phrase sparkle. She's erudite – learned, even - but not pretentious. Her deft touch and subtlety animate even the prosaic: “Ah Luton,” she writes. “Spiritual home of the hat trade.” She makes it look easy. Hands-down, five stars for art.
Then there's the poker stuff. Four stars for this, and possibly even a lingering glance in the direction of five. Ordinarily, poker players' written accounts of hands they've played are so dry and stilted that only the most ardent fan can be bothered to try to make head or tail of them. VC's, however, are compelling and fun. You almost feel as if you're sitting there with her, trying to read Emad Tahtouh or agonizing over how to play the awkward pair of jacks (the Botox hand, I like that).
I also like her sentimental attachment to the 7,4 unsuited. This is a hand that I would automatically fold (or 'pass' as she would say). Maybe I should be giving it a second look - low-key recreational player that I am, I'll happily fool around with this kind of thing.
As a memoir, I put the book at three stars. Her sketches of people she meets and the characters at her poker club are solid and fun to read, as are the parts about her father. I'm less certain, though, about some of her internal musings. At times they verge on the high-strung and over-wrought, while at other times she papers things over with breezy platitudes. Genuine candor, or a poker pro's stage-managed 'secrets'? I don't know. Other readers will make up their own minds.
There is some repetition in the book, which suggests that bits of the material may have been recycled and re-purposed. If that's true it didn't particularly matter to me, since I'd seen none of it before.
One niggling, very minor irritant is VC's frequent mention of people borrowing money for gambling. For instance, she recounts an episode in Las Vegas, where she's burned through her entire stash and is on the phone with her bank in London trying to arrange an extension to her overdraft. She presents it as if that's the sort of thing that inevitably happens to the professional gambler and concludes, with only slight irony, that she will simply play her way out of the debt.
Had I written that scene I would have dropped in a pretty heavy disclaimer: There are no circumstances whatsoever under which anyone, even a supposed professional, should gamble with borrowed money. It is not cute. It is not clever or cool. It's the moral equivalent of getting involved with methamphetamine. To use the lawyer's term of art, it is fucking moronic. You gamble only with money you can afford to lose. Got it? Good. Now run along kids, and remember that roulette and blackjack are for mugs. Poker is the game.
Overall, a well-written and thoroughly entertaining book. Highly recommended.
August 25, 2025
[N]ostalgia is a primal emotion, like fear and anger and (maybe) love. It just seems otherwise, because it has a long name and is tricky to define out loud. So you might mistake it for one of those fiddly, sophisticated feelings like scahdenfreude or low self-esteem. But nostalgia is simple, basic, instinctive and it was always there.
Found this book after spending way too long searching for it in a Waterstones. I eventually had to ask someone for help (horror of horrors!) and it turns out it was hidden away in a little section with the TV stuff and near neither the biographies nor the hobbies & games books(?) But oh well, I'm glad I kept at it because the book was worth it! I absolutely sped through it because I found it so engaging and difficult to put down. Admittedly I came for Victoria Coren Mitchell and not for poker but the way she writes about the game---its atmosphere and players and the way both changed as poker rose in popularity, especially online---was equally as fascinating to me as the memoir side of things. And though I'm a biiiit biased towards anything she does, it's a genuinely interesting and well-written book (that I'd be glad to loan to anyone interested because if it was hard for me to find in London it's relatively impossible here).
Queen of hearts, more like the queen of my heart because Victoria that is what you are. 4.5⭐️
Found this book after spending way too long searching for it in a Waterstones. I eventually had to ask someone for help (horror of horrors!) and it turns out it was hidden away in a little section with the TV stuff and near neither the biographies nor the hobbies & games books(?) But oh well, I'm glad I kept at it because the book was worth it! I absolutely sped through it because I found it so engaging and difficult to put down. Admittedly I came for Victoria Coren Mitchell and not for poker but the way she writes about the game---its atmosphere and players and the way both changed as poker rose in popularity, especially online---was equally as fascinating to me as the memoir side of things. And though I'm a biiiit biased towards anything she does, it's a genuinely interesting and well-written book (that I'd be glad to loan to anyone interested because if it was hard for me to find in London it's relatively impossible here).
Queen of hearts, more like the queen of my heart because Victoria that is what you are. 4.5⭐️
March 11, 2020
While clearing bookshelves I came across this book I’d read some years ago. It made enough of an impression on me at the time that I thought I’d highlight it here on my GR reading list.
As background the author is a popular, light hearted TV presenter on British TV. It came as a surprise to find she also had a rather successful career as a professional poker player. That’s a life style I just couldn’t understand - the thought of risking hard earned money on a hand of playing cards horrifies me! But, at my wife’s insistence that it was more than a guide to poker, I plunged into and enjoyed her autobiographical account of a poker players life. From her beginnings in small clubs where the social side seems as important as the game through to big international tournaments.
You have to admire her determination to take part in and succeed in what is a predominately male world. She clearly enjoys the lifestyle, fills you in on some strange people she’s met, and introduces you to a world where most of us, wisely, will not tread.
Worth a read if you fancy learning about what it is to gamble for serious money, and also her survival in a smokey, boozy, sexist and, for me, a soulless world. She didn’t convert me but winning regularly must help though!
It’s well written, witty and I enjoyed it.
As background the author is a popular, light hearted TV presenter on British TV. It came as a surprise to find she also had a rather successful career as a professional poker player. That’s a life style I just couldn’t understand - the thought of risking hard earned money on a hand of playing cards horrifies me! But, at my wife’s insistence that it was more than a guide to poker, I plunged into and enjoyed her autobiographical account of a poker players life. From her beginnings in small clubs where the social side seems as important as the game through to big international tournaments.
You have to admire her determination to take part in and succeed in what is a predominately male world. She clearly enjoys the lifestyle, fills you in on some strange people she’s met, and introduces you to a world where most of us, wisely, will not tread.
Worth a read if you fancy learning about what it is to gamble for serious money, and also her survival in a smokey, boozy, sexist and, for me, a soulless world. She didn’t convert me but winning regularly must help though!
It’s well written, witty and I enjoyed it.
August 31, 2025
Dit boek is heel fijn geschreven, zo grappig, en ook met zoveel gemak.
Je leest over het leven van Victoria Coren zelf, hoe ze zich al jong stort in de pokerwereld, die behalve vol verlies, verslaving, seksisme en depressie ook een warm bad is vol karakteristieke figuren (met bijnamen als The Elegance, Devilfish, The Sweep, Amarillo Slim). En waar ze zich als enige vrouw tussen al die stoere mannen prima kan redden en ook grote toernooien wint.
Je leest hoe de pokerwereld vanaf begin jaren ’90 (toen die nog kleinschalig en schimmig was) door televisie en internetpoker verandert naar een massaspel.
En je krijgt beschrijvingen van pokerpartijen, die bijzonder spannend zijn om te lezen, ook al wist ik in het begin nog helemaal niets van poker.
Heerlijk boek, maar ik ga maar niet beginnen aan poker :)
Je leest over het leven van Victoria Coren zelf, hoe ze zich al jong stort in de pokerwereld, die behalve vol verlies, verslaving, seksisme en depressie ook een warm bad is vol karakteristieke figuren (met bijnamen als The Elegance, Devilfish, The Sweep, Amarillo Slim). En waar ze zich als enige vrouw tussen al die stoere mannen prima kan redden en ook grote toernooien wint.
Je leest hoe de pokerwereld vanaf begin jaren ’90 (toen die nog kleinschalig en schimmig was) door televisie en internetpoker verandert naar een massaspel.
En je krijgt beschrijvingen van pokerpartijen, die bijzonder spannend zijn om te lezen, ook al wist ik in het begin nog helemaal niets van poker.
Heerlijk boek, maar ik ga maar niet beginnen aan poker :)
Read
January 6, 2025Outstanding memoir which is about a lot more than poker (which is good because I got to the end still with zero clue how poker works). Deeply likeable--engaging, moving, funny, frank, very tense at points, and with an absolutely savage edge. (She eviscerates Ricky Gervais in a couple of lines. Good.) Coren comes across as honest and hugely likeable in an anxious way, and I was pleased to be reading it some years later so I knew she'd find Mr Right, which is ridiculous. Highly recommended.
June 25, 2020
I adored everything about this book. Didn't know I could love Victoria Coren more than I already did, but it happened.
December 17, 2024
Not understanding a thing about poker didn't hamper my total enjoyment of this book. Such a great read and full of emotion and the sorts of amazing characters you'd expect in the world of professional poker.
November 29, 2023
Thrilled to report that Victoria really is a naturally good writer, on top of all her other charms. Right now she is more my idol than ever.
February 7, 2022
I didn't understand any of the poker stuff but it didn’t matter.
What a fascinating glimpse into this side of Victoria’s life.
She is an amazing writer. Actually, she’s an amazing everything.
What a fascinating glimpse into this side of Victoria’s life.
She is an amazing writer. Actually, she’s an amazing everything.
April 25, 2015
I've always liked Victoria Coren, I find her classy, witty and funny, and her book is no exception. I like playing cards, too--well, not actually playing with the cards, but the cards themselves (I may have taken on my drunken dad and uncles in a few games as a kid and cleaned house, but I have since completely forgotten how to play any game requiring more skill than blackjack or computer-based games that tell you what the good tricks are or what cards you can play). So, at the very least, I can relate to her as a young player of cards, wanting to join in her brother's games--and hats off to her brother for actually being willing to teach her!
But, the great thing about this book is that while it is a poker book, as well as a memoir, it is not one or the other, but truly both. You can pick up some things about the game intuitively (and isn't that really the fun thing about playing cards?) because Coren does not, like many other people who write autobiographies, feel the need to patronize her readers and stop the narrative to explain what a big blind or being on the button is (though if you want to know, there's a simple glossary of terms at the back), nor does she allow the possibility of someone not knowing what these things are to keep them from enjoying her book.
I liked hearing about her friends and competitors, about her travels, and about her thoughts...and was surprised to find that when the chapter did come where she tells of her win at the European final, I was actually excited and waiting to see what would happen--even though, obviously, I knew. There was something about the way she wrote it that really communicated the thrill of the game to me, and made me understand why so many people bankrupt themselves at cards--if it was that exciting for me, I'm sure I would have probably stuck with it more than I did, too.
But, the great thing about this book is that while it is a poker book, as well as a memoir, it is not one or the other, but truly both. You can pick up some things about the game intuitively (and isn't that really the fun thing about playing cards?) because Coren does not, like many other people who write autobiographies, feel the need to patronize her readers and stop the narrative to explain what a big blind or being on the button is (though if you want to know, there's a simple glossary of terms at the back), nor does she allow the possibility of someone not knowing what these things are to keep them from enjoying her book.
I liked hearing about her friends and competitors, about her travels, and about her thoughts...and was surprised to find that when the chapter did come where she tells of her win at the European final, I was actually excited and waiting to see what would happen--even though, obviously, I knew. There was something about the way she wrote it that really communicated the thrill of the game to me, and made me understand why so many people bankrupt themselves at cards--if it was that exciting for me, I'm sure I would have probably stuck with it more than I did, too.
June 13, 2018
Memoirs, especially by repeat-offender celebs such as Jamie Oliver, Russell Brand and so on are not really of great interest to me.
Victoria Coren, also known by her married name of Victoria Coren Mitchell is a journalist, comedienne, married to a comedian (David Mitchell) and a regular on panel shows ranging from topical satire such as Have I Got News For You, various Radio 4 programmes. I even think I have seen her on Question Time.
I think Victoria is the sort of bratty younger sister I would have loved to have in my life. I was the youngest of four children I guess I was the brat....
Anyway, this book is about Victoria's love for poker, and her journey to the big time on the circuit piqued my interest. This, coupled with the fact I like her humour anyway made this an easy, fun, yet informative read for me. Also it in inspirational. I started playing poker again!
In the mid-1990s, I played my first game of poker at the Midland Wheel casino in Birmingham. My then girlfriend told me to 'watch out for the men on the table. They don't like to lose.'
What did I care about that? I was there to win. I had a rudimentary understanding of the game, but I can also judge people's body behaviour. Not all the time, but when it comes to poker, yes, absolutely.
I didn't lose that night, and its fair to say that there were a lot of frowns around the table.
In this book, however, Victoria is competing in very much a man's world. What I like about her style is that she doesn't play the feminist card, she doesn't see her femininity as a weakness - rather, it's a strength. She doesn't want to do anything crazy. She knows her limits, and she bets smart. The way she introduces the other players is smart as well. She is competing with them but she respects them too - and she also gains their respect as a result.
Over time, she grows from seedy London backstreet gaming to the big European tour.
This book catalogues her journey and it is a joy to behold.
Victoria Coren, also known by her married name of Victoria Coren Mitchell is a journalist, comedienne, married to a comedian (David Mitchell) and a regular on panel shows ranging from topical satire such as Have I Got News For You, various Radio 4 programmes. I even think I have seen her on Question Time.
I think Victoria is the sort of bratty younger sister I would have loved to have in my life. I was the youngest of four children I guess I was the brat....
Anyway, this book is about Victoria's love for poker, and her journey to the big time on the circuit piqued my interest. This, coupled with the fact I like her humour anyway made this an easy, fun, yet informative read for me. Also it in inspirational. I started playing poker again!
In the mid-1990s, I played my first game of poker at the Midland Wheel casino in Birmingham. My then girlfriend told me to 'watch out for the men on the table. They don't like to lose.'
What did I care about that? I was there to win. I had a rudimentary understanding of the game, but I can also judge people's body behaviour. Not all the time, but when it comes to poker, yes, absolutely.
I didn't lose that night, and its fair to say that there were a lot of frowns around the table.
In this book, however, Victoria is competing in very much a man's world. What I like about her style is that she doesn't play the feminist card, she doesn't see her femininity as a weakness - rather, it's a strength. She doesn't want to do anything crazy. She knows her limits, and she bets smart. The way she introduces the other players is smart as well. She is competing with them but she respects them too - and she also gains their respect as a result.
Over time, she grows from seedy London backstreet gaming to the big European tour.
This book catalogues her journey and it is a joy to behold.
December 24, 2024
I’ve been interested in poker since I was taught to play at 11, and had an up and down fascination with playing it properly, in casinos and clubs and online. This book made me realise why I couldn’t handle it. Coren (Mitchell) tells the story of the romantic and dark past of the game, with its bluff and excitement, and its transformation into a numbers and logic game. In 2009 this was just getting started - in 2024, the game is nothing but solvers, GTO and silence. Playing poker throughout my teenage years and at university was full of chat, deception and entertainment, and I still hold onto that, but that’s old school. In the few times I’ve played at a casino, it’s exactly as Coren is disappointed it has become. You’re up against people who just crunch the numbers, looking serious and chastise anything unorthodox - I just want to be silly and psychological.
October 3, 2025
My dad has been a poker player my whole life. For as long as I can remember he spends every June in vegas. His best friends are from poker, he and my mom made appearances in all the fancy magazines of the time, I vacationed to all the LAPT tournaments when I was a little girl. I remember seating behind my dad yearning for the promised 5% of the earnings and scowling at him for folding the cards that then appeared in the flop. He would look back and raise his eyebrows “cualquiera, mirando el flop”. Anyways, I reeeeaaaaally know this world; I don’t knot about positions or tactics and whatnot but I know all the people in it, at least back home so this was a very fun and relatable read. Victoria Coren is a super talented writer and I wish her all the best.
March 1, 2024
I like Victoria Coren-Mitchell, and her humor and voice are the best part of the book. The middle drags and gets a bit repetitive. However, the last few chapters are the best bits, so I give it a 3 rather than the 2 I was feeling halfway through.
March 10, 2022
AHHHHHHH
August 5, 2022
A really engaging, interesting account of Victoria Coren's first steps into the world of poker, bringing insights into the game but also a very human and honest portrayal of her own life and feelings. Read in one night, highly recommended.
Read
July 19, 2022It is not about the money. It is about not wanting to die.
Read
December 8, 2024Video Review: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_lF-F...
May 18, 2025
I really like Victoria but this book didn't really keep me gripped.
January 19, 2022
Tore through this book, very compelling read
June 28, 2025
For anyone about to read this simply because Victoria is married to comedian David Mitchell, be warned that it was published before they got together. You should still read it. Who she was before they met is immensely intriguing. This is quite well written, as you'd expect from someone so brilliant...brilliant provided you haven't caught her out in the midst of an embarrassing task-based panel show.
May 16, 2011
As soon as I saw Victoria Coren talking about her book on Twitter, I knew that I was going to have to read it. Witty, intelligent, dead cute and sister of the equally entertaining although more sweary Giles, she really is my OH's celebrity crush, which is why we had to watch Only Connect religiously when it was on.
So, not only does Coren have all that going for her, she is also ‘a bit naughty’ because she has immersed herself in the ‘seedy’ world of poker – except she doesn’t just dabble, she was in fact the first woman to win the European Poker Tour – netting herself a cool £500k in 2006.
This book describes her journey to that moment – both in life, from when she was taught poker by her uncle, and interspersed with the actual tournament, round by round.
I have to admit, I know nothing about Poker. I have never played a game in my life. And after reading the book, I want to rectify that – but I would be too scared of losing money.
I had to try to learn what ‘the flop’ and ‘the river’ and what hands trumped others as I was reading, but to tell you the truth, that didn’t matter! Not knowing how the game worked wasn’t detrimental to my enjoyment of the book.
Coren managed to convey the excitement of the hands, the build up within the match in the indivdual rounds without me really knowing what was going on – and that was only part of the book. The alternating chapters were an open and honest account of the often eccentric, generally intelligent and never boring group of characters that she hasd met along the way – at first as a scary bunch that she was trying to get to accept her (as generally the only woman), but who mainly have ended up becoming friends.
I loved the book – I was actually quite upset when it finished…but I need to stop dreaming of becoming a poker champion myself. I’ve never played a hand, and I think it’s probably a little too late for me to start!
So, not only does Coren have all that going for her, she is also ‘a bit naughty’ because she has immersed herself in the ‘seedy’ world of poker – except she doesn’t just dabble, she was in fact the first woman to win the European Poker Tour – netting herself a cool £500k in 2006.
This book describes her journey to that moment – both in life, from when she was taught poker by her uncle, and interspersed with the actual tournament, round by round.
I have to admit, I know nothing about Poker. I have never played a game in my life. And after reading the book, I want to rectify that – but I would be too scared of losing money.
I had to try to learn what ‘the flop’ and ‘the river’ and what hands trumped others as I was reading, but to tell you the truth, that didn’t matter! Not knowing how the game worked wasn’t detrimental to my enjoyment of the book.
Coren managed to convey the excitement of the hands, the build up within the match in the indivdual rounds without me really knowing what was going on – and that was only part of the book. The alternating chapters were an open and honest account of the often eccentric, generally intelligent and never boring group of characters that she hasd met along the way – at first as a scary bunch that she was trying to get to accept her (as generally the only woman), but who mainly have ended up becoming friends.
I loved the book – I was actually quite upset when it finished…but I need to stop dreaming of becoming a poker champion myself. I’ve never played a hand, and I think it’s probably a little too late for me to start!
May 7, 2014
I don't really know how poker works, but not knowing my rivers from my big blinds didn't stop me from enjoying this book. I guess that's because it's one of those trick books, which pretends it's about one thing (poker) but is actually about another (geeky, sort-of-daddy's-girl wants to find somewhere where she belongs and does so in an unlikely place). As a geeky, sort-of-daddy's-girl myself, I completely understand.
The internal monologues covering Coren's hands in her triumphant 2006 EPT title win have a hypnotic quality for someone like me who began the book knowing none of these words and their meanings, and picked it up as I went along. Turned out there was a glossary at the back. It might have been less of an adventure wading through those words if I had known that. Oh well.
It's Coren's line in character sketches I liked most. Her way of describing people and places was where the book had its main strength as the people around her in the world of poker saw their fortunes ebb and flow. Her own reflections on her problems - depression, family illness and death - were particularly striking by Coren's frankness and the way she refuses to over-dramatise them. They appear chronologically, like all other events, there is no heavy-handed foreshadowing or unsubtle cliffhangers.
As a small social history of the poker scene it was a nice primer, although I did have some unanswered questions at the end. But as a book about finding somewhere to belong and then - maybe accidentally, maybe deliberately, maybe neither - getting good at it, it was bang on target.
The internal monologues covering Coren's hands in her triumphant 2006 EPT title win have a hypnotic quality for someone like me who began the book knowing none of these words and their meanings, and picked it up as I went along. Turned out there was a glossary at the back. It might have been less of an adventure wading through those words if I had known that. Oh well.
It's Coren's line in character sketches I liked most. Her way of describing people and places was where the book had its main strength as the people around her in the world of poker saw their fortunes ebb and flow. Her own reflections on her problems - depression, family illness and death - were particularly striking by Coren's frankness and the way she refuses to over-dramatise them. They appear chronologically, like all other events, there is no heavy-handed foreshadowing or unsubtle cliffhangers.
As a small social history of the poker scene it was a nice primer, although I did have some unanswered questions at the end. But as a book about finding somewhere to belong and then - maybe accidentally, maybe deliberately, maybe neither - getting good at it, it was bang on target.
July 28, 2015
Before reading this book, I had thought that Victoria (Vicky) Coren was a journalist who played a bit of poker, like many slebs. This book reveals that she is more of a professional poker player who is also a journalist - she was (is?) even sponsored by the world's biggest online poker site (Pokerstars) to play in tourneys and has won $1.5m (it says here on the blurb).
In fact, she probably a lot more now since she also won the EPT again recently - this is the main event of the European poker tour, which she is the only person to have won twice and one of the nice things about this excellent book is the way she interweaves the story of that huge first win, along with dramatic hand histories, into the general narrative of her evolving and slightly incongruous love of poker, in that she is a highly educated and well-to-do woman from a fairly famous family, not a bluff geezer of the type that occupy her beloved Vic, the London gambling club where she learned to play the game.
She tells the story of this love affair with the very male-dominated world of poker in compelling fashion, and you don't have to understand the poker-speak of three-bets, flops and rivers to enjoy the fine writing here. She writes particularly eloquently about her own feelings of depression, her love of gambling (though poker is not pure gambling at her level of skill) and about her late father, Alan Coren. If you only read one book about poker, then this would be a good one.
In fact, she probably a lot more now since she also won the EPT again recently - this is the main event of the European poker tour, which she is the only person to have won twice and one of the nice things about this excellent book is the way she interweaves the story of that huge first win, along with dramatic hand histories, into the general narrative of her evolving and slightly incongruous love of poker, in that she is a highly educated and well-to-do woman from a fairly famous family, not a bluff geezer of the type that occupy her beloved Vic, the London gambling club where she learned to play the game.
She tells the story of this love affair with the very male-dominated world of poker in compelling fashion, and you don't have to understand the poker-speak of three-bets, flops and rivers to enjoy the fine writing here. She writes particularly eloquently about her own feelings of depression, her love of gambling (though poker is not pure gambling at her level of skill) and about her late father, Alan Coren. If you only read one book about poker, then this would be a good one.
October 6, 2014
Partly a biography, partly a treatise on modern poker, and partly the story of how Victoria Coren became the first female million-dollar-winner of the European Poker Tour (she's since gone on to win it a second time), this is one of the most readable books about a complex subject I've ever read.
Part of that is the chatty, witty writing style and, whilst it doesn't hold your hand in explaining the exotic-sounding poker terms and expressions, the book is still completely clear. This is because it is less about the game, and more about the bizzare and fascinating community that plays it.
Using Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as the metaphorical map through the rabbit-hole is a great device that mirrors the highs and lows of a life spent chasing cards in a game that was going through massive changes due to the internet.
Before reading this book I mainly new Victoria Coren from her great columns in The Observer and The Guardian newspapers, as well as her hosting of the fabulous Only Connect. My admiration for her has only increased since reading the book, the tale of an outsider in the shady world of professional poker, fighting acceptance, mysogyny, and her own addictions along the way. In the end she won me over in the same way she won the EPT - by knowing that "it's really not about the money".
Part of that is the chatty, witty writing style and, whilst it doesn't hold your hand in explaining the exotic-sounding poker terms and expressions, the book is still completely clear. This is because it is less about the game, and more about the bizzare and fascinating community that plays it.
Using Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as the metaphorical map through the rabbit-hole is a great device that mirrors the highs and lows of a life spent chasing cards in a game that was going through massive changes due to the internet.
Before reading this book I mainly new Victoria Coren from her great columns in The Observer and The Guardian newspapers, as well as her hosting of the fabulous Only Connect. My admiration for her has only increased since reading the book, the tale of an outsider in the shady world of professional poker, fighting acceptance, mysogyny, and her own addictions along the way. In the end she won me over in the same way she won the EPT - by knowing that "it's really not about the money".
December 7, 2014
I like Victoria Coren when I see her on the telly. I follow her on twitter because she's witty and clever but still seems down to earth. So, even though I know nothing about poker, I thought I'd give her poker autobiography a go. It's a mixture of "how I fell in love with poker and the things that were going on in my life" and "how I became the first woman to win the European Poker Tour", with the autobiographical stuff making up the bulk of each chapter and then an analysis of that tournament winning series of games at the end. I had to read a glossary of poker terms to have the vaguest clue about what was going on in the game. I think I got my head around it 3/4s of the way in! Coren writes well, of course. She is honest about poker, affectionate about the poker family she has made, and very entertaining with her turns of phrase. The only card games I've ever played are Whist, Rummy and Pontoon, so maybe I wasn't at quite the disadvantage I thought I was, but I know that I would be useless at poker. All that analysing other people, working out the odds and deciding how much money to risk would tire me out. But then, I am extremely risk averse. Still, I enjoyed the book, even if it didn't turn me into a gambler.
July 14, 2015
I have a fondness for Victoria Coren's wit and honesty on Only Connect, and always assumed that she was a posh girl solely based on her accent. I apologise. In the book what little personal life she shares is interesting and a reminder that a great accent is often misleading.
Victoria's book is a tale of poker and its place in her life. She writes of flushes and pairs and blinds like an expert. .. while I know nothing of poker, the narrative is interesting enough to carry me past. I love how she describes the past of poker and takes you through the online changes that made it acceptable. The story of her Big Win drops by between chapters, and adds excitement as well as intrigue.
Best of all though I liked how she used phrases and metaphors to relate poker to life. Her father's illness and other problems are seen in terms of the game.
There is no really intimate family content here, no big exposé of celebrity here, not even a tale of how she met her husband, but the book shows how her poker mates became family. And I now know why Devilfish deserved a tribute on Twitter. Enjoyable and a new experience for me as a confirmed fiction reader.
Victoria's book is a tale of poker and its place in her life. She writes of flushes and pairs and blinds like an expert. .. while I know nothing of poker, the narrative is interesting enough to carry me past. I love how she describes the past of poker and takes you through the online changes that made it acceptable. The story of her Big Win drops by between chapters, and adds excitement as well as intrigue.
Best of all though I liked how she used phrases and metaphors to relate poker to life. Her father's illness and other problems are seen in terms of the game.
There is no really intimate family content here, no big exposé of celebrity here, not even a tale of how she met her husband, but the book shows how her poker mates became family. And I now know why Devilfish deserved a tribute on Twitter. Enjoyable and a new experience for me as a confirmed fiction reader.
August 24, 2011
I bought this on Amazon for £1 when they were having a Kindle ebook sale. All I had to do was wait until I eventually bought a Kindle. And when I did this was my first book. And what a book!
Victoria Coren, from the crazily talented Coren family, has many strings to her bow. She's hosted Heresy on Radio 4, Only Connect on BBC4, writes for the Guardian and as she's best known in the context of this book, a Poker Champion.
In For Richer, For Poorer, Coren charts her love affair with poker from an early age through to the major tournaments she's taken part it. She candidly discusses the camaraderie, the shady characters and the emotional battles that came out of living the life of a poker player both before, during and after the poker explosion of the mid 00s.
The book is funny, fascinating, emotional and and full of heart. I've never been a big poker person but this book has opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed and has made me think about paying more attention to this intriguing game.
Victoria Coren, from the crazily talented Coren family, has many strings to her bow. She's hosted Heresy on Radio 4, Only Connect on BBC4, writes for the Guardian and as she's best known in the context of this book, a Poker Champion.
In For Richer, For Poorer, Coren charts her love affair with poker from an early age through to the major tournaments she's taken part it. She candidly discusses the camaraderie, the shady characters and the emotional battles that came out of living the life of a poker player both before, during and after the poker explosion of the mid 00s.
The book is funny, fascinating, emotional and and full of heart. I've never been a big poker person but this book has opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed and has made me think about paying more attention to this intriguing game.
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