Anthony Holden - Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player

A NTHONY H OLDENS Big Deal has been praised as a classic of the genre by poker enthusiasts from Salman Rushdie to David Mamet and the late Walter Matthau. His bestselling biographies of Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Laurence Olivier, and the Prince of Wales have been hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as definitive. Holden is also an admired translator of works from the Greek classics to Italian opera, including Greek Pastoral Poetry for Penguin Classics and Don Giovanni and The Barber of Seville for English National Opera. His most recent books are The Wit in the Dungeon, a study of the Romantic poet and critic Leigh Hunt, and The Man Who Wrote Mozart, a life of Mozarts librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte. His next will be a sequel to this book, entitled Bigger Deal.

Mr. Holden writes with extreme grace and wit Good writing and good poker playing do not often go together, which makes Big Deal especially unusual. In Mr. Holdens appendix is a select bibliography of the three dozen best books on poker. Big Deal should be added to the list.

New York Times

A remarkable odysseypart Damon Runyon, part Dostoevsky. Holdens feat is far more gutsy than that of previous literary pilgrimages to the Vegas bacchanal His insights into the peculiar alchemy of character and fate that draws writers to poker turns his book into a high-stakes psychological thriller.

Vanity Fair

Whether or not Holden is the sucker is the plot line of this funny and amiable account of self-delusion at calamitys edge Holdens book does well because he sees what is admirable in the splendid anarchism of the great players.

Time Magazine

Poker, as Anthony Holden astutely points out, is a lot like life. This idea informs his very funny book, with its priceless descriptions of hands, bluffs and fellow players.

Los Angeles Times

An entertaining tale, made all the more so by Holdens smooth prose and gift for self-deprecation He pursued his impossible dream, managed to end in the black, and walked away with the material for an agreeable, informative book. Big Deal is the next best thing to being next to [the games great characters] at the poker table; its also a lot easier on the wallet.

Washington Post

The shelf of high quality books about poker is very narrow. But you can add Anthony Holdens Big Deal Delightfully satisfying. A gem of sporting life.

Las Vegas Review-Journal

I read at a sitting Anthony Holdens vivid and funny account of his well-spent (in every sense) year as a professional poker player. And I will read it again when Im next seized with an urgent desire to buy a plane ticket to Las Vegas.

Jonathan Raban, Independent on Sunday

Sharp, feisty and well-crafted fascinating.

David Spanier, Spectator

Bursts with extraordinary real-life characters.

John Graham, Daily Mail

Beneath Golden Holdens charm and warmth lurks the brain of a rattlesnake Holden is a marvellous reporter, and as gutsy as Red Rum

Michael Thompson-Noel, Financial Times

Rollickingly enjoyable It has a remarkable kid-in-acandy-store momentum.

Andrew Martin, The Listener

A fascinating, funny, firsthand book about the great characters of the greatest of card gamesnot least my friend London Tony himself, a man who knows America better than most Americans.

Cleveland Amory

The best book about poker Ive ever read.

Walter Matthau

Precise, provocative and enlightening. A must for every poker players library.

Telly Savalas

Tony is toney When the pot gets high, the hour late, and you need to see what he has in the hole, then the lounge lizard melds into a loan shark

Martin Amis

A Year as a
Professional Poker Player

ANTHONY HOLDEN

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS
New York London Toronto Sydney

ALSO BY ANTHONY HOLDEN

The St. Albans Poisoner

Charles, Prince of Wales

Olivier

The Oscars: The Secret History of Hollywoods Academy Awards

The Tarnished Crown: Crisis in the House of Windsor

Tchaikovsky

Diana: A Life, a Legacy

William Shakespeare: His Life and Work

William Shakespeare: An Illustrated Biography

The Wit in the Dungeon: The Life of Leigh Hunt

The Man Who Wrote Mozart: The Extraordinary Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte

Journalism

Of Presidents, Prime Ministers and Princes

The Last Paragraph: The Journalism of David Blundy (ed.)

Translation

Aeschylus Agamemnon

The Greek Anthology (contrib.)

Greek Pastoral Poetry

Mozarts Don Giovanni (with Amanda Holden)

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Copyright 1990 by Anthony Holden Limited

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition April 2007

Originally published in Great Britain in 1990 by Bantam Press

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Designed by Dana Sloan

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9481-2

ISBN-10: 0-7432-9481-5
ISBN 978-1-451-60408-5

For Al Alvarez (a.k.a. the Crony)
who wont mind splitting this pot with
Anne and Cindy, his moll and mine.

Son, you are now going out into the wide, wide world to make your own way, and it is a very good thing to do, as there are no more opportunities for you in this burg. I am only sorry that I am not able to bank-roll you to a very large start, but not having any potatoes to give you, I am now going to stake you to some very valuable advice, which I personally collect in my years of experience around and about, and I hope and trust you will always bear this advice in mind.

Son, no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get, always remember this: Some day, somewhere, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an ear full of cider.

Damon Runyon, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown

BIG DEAL

One Saturday evening in the mid-1990s, a few years after this book was first published, a genial young American approached me in the bar of Londons Victoria Casino, introduced himself, and asked if I was the guy who had written Big Deal. Indeed I was, I replied with a modest smile, and looked over to my wife (the sometime Moll of the ensuing pages) for the gently mocking smile that usually greets these occasional little boosts to my ego.