Poker Book Review - Big Deal: Confessions of a Professional Poker Player

Poker Book Review: Big Deal: Confessions of a Professional Poker Player by Anthony Holden

Since the poker boom in 2003, the poker world has been flooded by hundreds of books dedicating themselves to the game. Some of these books are astounding and offer insight into strategies, game variants, and the players themselves; however, many of these are low-quality works merely reiterating what many books before them had contained in the hopes of making a quick buck. Unfortunately, with the release of these new poker books, publications written before the poker boom have largely fallen by the wayside. One such book, Big Deal: Confessions of a Professional Poker Player, was written by Anthony Holden in 1990.

Big Deal documents Holden’s year-long “voyage of self-discovery” (between the 1988 and 1989 World Series of Poker) as a professional poker player. Holden, the author of such renowned biographies of Sir Laurence Olivier and Prince Charles, writes about his numerous poker experiences including his Tuesday Night game, traveling around the world playing the poker circuit, and playing against the likes of Doyle Brunson, Stu “the Kid” Ungar, and Phil Hellmuth Jr. with a writing mixture of comedy, drama, farce, and tragedy. Holden’s precious writing style, which combines his journalistic roots and a strong English charm, makes this an engaging and remarkably smooth read. The book delves little into poker strategy, relying heavily on capturing the thrill and excitement found throughout the game both on and off the felt. Written in a time before Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu, Big Deal manages to relate stories involving poker legends such as Berry Johnston, Tom McEvoy, and Johnny Chan in a time and place before expansive television coverage. Salman Rushdie of The Times Literary Supplement (London) got it right when he said Big Deal was “Vivid, engrossing, superb . . . the best description of word-class poker we’ve been given,” and Time magazine didn’t miss the mark by saying it was “A funny and amiable account of self-delusion at calamity’s edge.”

Big Deal is the equivalent of having pocket aces in a Texas Hold’em game. It is a hand, or in this case a book, that is highly valued, desired, and doesn’t come along too often. Holden captures the spirit of struggling poker professionals and the rollercoaster of emotion involved in that pursuit, he even comes to the realization that “poker was not a matter of life and death, it was much more serious than that.” I thoroughly enjoyed the book throughout and appreciated Holden’s ability not only to keep the reader engaged, but to keep him hooked on every adventure and every hand. Not only this, he does it in a poetic prose not accustomed to poker publications and makes it work! Big Deal is among the best non-strategy poker books I have read, and I highly recommend it to any poker enthusiast. The New York Times said it best when it reviewed the book as, “Diverting . . . Mr. Holden writes with extreme grace and wit . . . Big Deal should be added to the list of the best books on poker.”

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