Bigger Deal

It’s incredible to think that the original Big Deal was written over 17 years ago and shipped onto the shelves way before the poker explosion changed the face of the game. Less surprising is the release of the sequel.

After all, Big Deal was the seminal poker text in the UK and eagerly devoured by a new generation of poker enthusiasts keen to emulate Holden’s adventures: to play poker, travel the world, win enough to live on and, ultimately, triumph at the WSOP.

Bigger Deal provides Holden with a similar brief – to win the World Series – and tasks him with discovering just how much the poker landscape has changed over the past few years. The answer is immeasurably. And ironically, this is the reason why Bigger Deal was never going to scale the peaks of the original.

In 1990 poker was uncharted territory, a mysterious and still slightly dangerous pursuit. Now it’s a part of life for a lot of ordinary people and its exploits infinitely more documented. Unless you’re a recent convert the book isn’t going to tell you much that’s new. From the explosion of online poker, through Moneymaker, Hachem and Jamie Gold, the stories have been told elsewhere.

Thankfully though, that’s immaterial. It’s Holden’s effortless prose that makes Bigger Deal a triumph. Holden’s ebullience is infectious and if Bigger Deal merely affirms your love of the game, as opposed to inspiring you to new heights, so what?

It’s this sort of affirmation that reminds you why you place so much stock in the vagaries of a pack of playing cards. Without Holden the UK poker scene would be a much poorer place. Without Bigger Deal the same could be said about your bookshelf.