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Bigger Deal
Product
Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit by Anthony Holden
Hits
- Like Big Deal, enables the reader to live the glamorous poker lifestyle vicariously
- Provides a good basic primer on changes in the poker world since the online and TV booms
- Plenty of interesting anecdotes and profiles of some of poker's most intriguing figures
Misses
- Doesn't provide any groundbreaking analysis of the new poker landscape beyond what has already appeared elsewhere
- Doesn't really give a good picture of the realities of the "New Poker Circuit"
- A few too many bad beat stories, not enough wins
Review
If the Chris Moneymaker/World Poker Tour-bred poker boom of the early 2000s has been good to any one demographic (besides those who make Phil Hellmuth bobble-heads), it's the niche-market publishers. In the years following the invention of the auto-fold button, the publishing world has churned out rainforests' worth of poker-related pap, with everyone from Doyle Brunson to Vince Van Patten (the Picasso Flop, anyone?) rushing to exchange their rounder-related wisdom for a few more big bets.
Amidst the heaps of celebrity cash-ins and insubstantial instruction manuals, however, the more literate of poker's province have had precious little to sink their teeth into since James McManus made his much-ballyhooed run at poker immortality in 2003's Positively Fifth Street.
Anthony Holden, who counts among his friends Martin Amis, David Mamet and the grandfather of really good poker nonfiction, Al Alvarez (whose The Biggest Game in Town, concerning the 1981 World Series of Poker, is a must-read for anyone interested in the game), turned scores of readers on to poker as a career choice with his Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player (1990).
The book chronicled his efforts to make his living as a professional poker player over a year of grinding in some of the poker world's most exotic locales. Those efforts would ultimately prove unfruitful, and following a 111th-place finish in the 1989 WSOP, Holden would turn his attention back to his day job for over 15 years.
Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit attempts to replicate Big Deal's highly effective structure, beginning and ending as it does with a pair of unremarkable World Series of Poker appearances that bookend another year at the poker tables. This time, however, it's 2005, and as the title would suggest, things done changed.
Just as there was in Big Deal, there is an undeniable vicarious thrill to be had in following Holden as he attempts to crack the money in a number of luxurious destination spots worldwide. The author visits, among other places, Las Vegas, Austria and Spain, as well as more pedestrian locales like Foxwoods, Conn., and Walsall, U.K., playing in everything from freerolls to $10,000 main events in pursuit of the big score.
As he travels, Holden describes what he sees as the new world of poker, giving readers primers on the effects both online poker and television productions like the World Poker Tour have had on the game. The reader is also treated to glimpses into the lives of some of the most colorful personalities in pro poker, including Marcel "The Flying Dutchman" Luske and Annie Duke, as well as lesser-known but arguably more important figures like Henry Orenstein, the inventor of the hole-card camera.
Ironically, it is the peculiarities of the "new" poker world that prevent Holden's sequel from reaching the same high notes as its predecessor. While Big Deal shed light on what in 1990 would have been a shadowy and unfamiliar world to most readers, the professional poker world in 2007 is neither illicit nor secret; it's a world of TV ratings and stock price fluctuations, and Holden does not bring much to the table that isn't already more or less common knowledge among his target audience.
Problems also arise when Holden switches gears to write about his own poker play. While James McManus was able to skillfully intertwine an account of his own fifth-place finish in the 2000 WSOP Main Event with an analysis of the pro poker world (and of the Ted Binion murder trial, which played out nearly simultaneously with the Main Event), Holden never comes close to the success that McManus experienced. Frankly, his narrative would have been a lot more compelling had the author been able to log a substantial cash or two.
Beyond that, the book's subtitle is somewhat misleading: Holden, hamstrung somewhat by the demands of his day job as a music critic for The Observer, only manages to make it to a handful of high-buy-in tournaments in between dashes back and forth to opera houses across the English countryside.
There is barely a hint of the "new poker circuit" of today, in which ambitious and well-funded players (almost invariably young Internet wizards) cross continents and oceans without a second thought, playing two and sometimes three $10,000 tournaments per month. Readers expecting an account of the often grueling life of the modern tournament poker player will not find what they're looking for within these pages.
That said, there are certainly moments that stand up to the work of Alvarez and McManus. As mentioned before, the section on Henry Orenstein (by all indications a man who deserves a more comprehensive treatment) is particularly impressive, as is Holden's account of his experiences playing for England at the World Cup of Poker in Barcelona.
Indeed, while it falls short of the benchmarks established by previous writers-turned-players (and by its predecessor), Bigger Deal does a good job of summarizing the new poker landscape for those unfamiliar with the game or its personalities. Those looking for a more incisive analysis of the new poker, however, or a comprehensive look into life on the circuit, will likely want to wait for something a little more ambitious.
Details:
- $26
Simon & Schuster
