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Bigger Deal


2007-05-10 11:09:43
By: Gene Bromberg

If you gather poker players together and ask them to name the greatest poker books of all time you'll probaby get a wide range of answers. There will be those who belong to the Sklansky/Malmuth camp, you'll hear from folks touting Dan Harrington's recent series, and there will no doubt be quite a few who hold that Super/System has never been topped.

These players are all, of course, wrong. The two greatest poker books ever written are The Biggest Game in Town by A. Alvarez and Big Deal by Anthony Holden. If you play poker, and you haven't read these books, then shame on you and get thee to Borders. These aren't instructional tomes--Alvarez wrote about the 1981 World Series of Poker and the legendary players of that era, and Holden wrote about spending a year trying to make it as a pro back in 1988. Both books provide exquisite portraits of the poker world long before the Moneymaker/WPT/online boom changed the game forever.

Of course it doesn't hurt that both Alvarez (a famed poet, essayist and critic) and Holden (an award-winning journalist and biographer) are magnificent writers and observers of the uniquely human condition that is the poker player. And so yesterday it was with a passion akin to lust that I tore open the box from Amazon that contained Bigger Deal, Holden's follow-up to his classic. Once again he's out on the tournament trail, one that has changed beyond recognition in the last 19 years.

I'll of course post a review once I get finished with it...so I'll stop blathering on and get back to my book! You should be headed to Borders right now anyway.


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