<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Not to be compared with "The Biggest Game in Town"
Review: Bellin's book, being reviewed on its merits, does not necessarily shine as an instruction on poker, for which there are already many serious titles written by champion players. (If you're curious, refer to 'Poker for Dummies,' by Lou Krieger and Richard Harroch for its syllabus on poker's Great Books.) Also, it does not serve as a major insight into the great champions of all time; for this, Alvarez has the edge, and in fact this book refers extensively to 'The Biggest Game in Town'.So why read it? For one, Bellin writes with great accessibility, intent on reaching the educated mind that knows next to nothing about poker. Some discussion of odds, strategy and game theory enters into this as a cursory matter, but again, he knows his audience well enough to stress human stories over mathematical propositions that would interest more serious players. While the average non-player couldn't care less about the odds of drawing to a double-ended straight after the flop, he would love to know what possesses bright and otherwise capable individuals to forsake the working world and depend on cards for a living. For another, Bellin pays far more attention to the dark and self-destructive side of poker's lure. He relates the story of Dolly and Dicky Horvath, minor pros who find themselves so benumbed by their chosen profession that they turn to drugs and prostitution to return passion to their lives and generate money with which to gamble. He talks about Korean Rich, a corporate attorney who threw away marriage and a nigh-guaranteed life of affluence because he could not control his urge to gamble. More than Alvarez does, Bellin confronts the damage wrought on people who play a game with a month's salary at risk every night, and the myriad of losers required to make others successful in poker. It's New Journalism, but so is almost every piece of non-fiction written with attention paid to one's entertainment since Tom Wolfe. With states and county governments looking for the Easy Way to expand their revenue bases and settling on legalized gambling, it's not very unlikely that everyone will find a lawful card room within a thirty-minute drive in the next decade. As Doyle Brunson put it, "Poker is a game of people," and Bellin has served to illustrate poker's minor characters with colors as vivid as others have its titans.
Rating: 
Summary: Smart, compelling, extraordinarily readable poker trip
Review: I am not an unbiased reviewer of this book. The author is my friend. But he is also the guy who taught me to play Texas Hold 'Em and other criminally fun poker games. So I can honestly report that this book captures all the energy of a poker table.
This is a special book. Part "how-to" manual, part history book, part road trip and part joke compendium, POKER NATION weaves the many tangled threads of a great game. Impressively, it's all these things without ever trying too hard. Bellin writes with such an easy, conversational style that the book feels like an old pal is telling stories. Meanwhile, he still manages to slip in painless little lessons and probability problems. By the end of the book, the reader is not only immensely entertained, but is a better poker player.
POKER NATION provides all of the action, thrill and brain rigor of a 10-hour visit to the Taj, without the secondhand smoke. Highly, enthusiastically recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Life in the eyes of semi-professional poker player
Review: I've read quite a few books about poker and this one is one of the best. You will not find many very valuable insights into the theory of poker (although there are a few that could be useful depending on the reader experience and familiarity with the game). But it really shows in unadorned way a life in semi-professional poker or of somebody in second echelon of professional players. The style of writing with self deprecating irony makes for an easy fun reading on quite serious subject. Every chapter touches a very different aspect of playing serious poker: tells, cheating, poker and realtionships, poker as a game of statictical probabilities, etc. It's difficult to tie such different subjects together but somehow it all provides for logically complete picture. Even the book is not written to be a complete introduction to the game of poker, it gives a very useful overview, including a poker lexicon, so that somebody will not be completely lost while playing for the first time in casino.
<< 1 >>
| 
