Chris Halverson’s Blog

Being a Professional Poker Player (TM) with a successful and ever interesting blog (just ask Felicia) has its advantages. There’s the fame, fortune, and women. Basically, think “rock star”.

There’s also the opportunity to review books and videos in return for some cheap advertising. Case in point, the fiction novel “Cards” by Jonathan Maxwell.

I received this book a few months ago and just finished it. This was not due to my super busy schedule or anything, after all it’s only 280 or so pages. What took me so long you may ask? Let’s frame it by using blogs as a reference. What are the two things that, in general (Felicia and I for sure), don’t like to read in blogs?

C’mon, I know you know…

Hand Histories

Bad beat stories

“Cards” has both in spades (pun somewhat intended).

(Spoilers below)

“Cards” is the fictionalized tale of a young California guy who is living the “dream” of playing poker for a living. It shows the life of a grinder in all its glory ranging from busting out and having to borrow money to pay the rent, to borrowing money to get high to blur the fact that he just busted. It relives his trip to Paris and the Aviation Club where he cashes out close to $30,000 while busting the rich French locals. He then takes his roll to Vegas with dreams of playing in the WSOP, only to bust out entirely well before the tourney.

(End spoilers)

Sounds like a good tale, and the tale itself is OK, the downside to the book is that it reads like a newbie poker blog. For example,

On the button I brace to raise without looking. Two seats before me, happy guy raises to 50. I shuffle twice then squeeze: 8…5.

Next hand: 8-5 again.

Next: J-4.

Q-8.

10-2.

6-K.

4-7.

That’s from page 124, but you can open up to almost any page and find something similar.

The upside to his wreckless and wild play is that it reads like a train wreck. You just know this is not going to end well, you just don’t know when or how.

Once again, much like some poker blogs.

The main redeeming value of the book was at the end. Assuming you make it to the end without being totally bored of reading hand histories, you get the advice of a friend who, after the hero limps back to LA after busting out, says:

“The most important element in poker is your bankroll” (Page 278)

In other words, don’t play above your roll and don’t put it all at stake at once. How many times have we read a blog entry that says something to the effect of, “I lost a third of my roll so I stepped up to 10/20 to try to get it back quickly and busted out, but boy are they terrible.” Uh huh, too many times. In fact, sometimes multiple times from the same person.

In the epilogue, the author mentions that he started writing this before the poker explosion and before the proliferation of online sites. This was to show the gritty underside of poker, and to that end he does a good job. The (over)abundance of hand history type of text shows that poker is not all like they show on TV where every hand has a lot of action. We all know that there are a lot of times where you get crappy cards for a long time and it does get frustrating. The author does a good job of showing that.

Did I like the book? Overall it was pretty good. It’s the first fiction poker book I’ve read and it does a good job of showing what “real” poker is like: long stretches of bad cards; strange players in the casinos; bankroll management issues; and how lonely the life of a pro grinder can be. To that end I would recommend it, just be aware that you will get a lot of hand histories and a few bad beats along the way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.