[Peter McDermott]

I thought I'd posted to this thread a couple of weeks ago. It seems I must have forgotten to hit the send button.

I enjoyed it, but that's because I'll read any poker book obsessively. I found the character infuriating. He goes on about being a great player, but claims he's never read a poker book -- well, I guess that explains some of the hands that he plays. In reality, I think that's true of the character but not of the author because some of his anecdotes were almost certainly derived from other poker books, but that's a nitpick.

The thing that frustrated me most though, was the lack of a decent proofreader. A stick of french bread is a baguette, not a bagget. The amount of money you bet is a stake, not a steak. And there were dozens of such clangers.

As poker novels go, I didn't think it was as well written as either Jesse May's Shut Up and Deal, or Rick Moody's King of a Small World. However, that said, I'd recommend it to anyone extremely interested in poker. He's at his best when he's writing about the poker mileux, or about his own obsessive nature, but there's actually too much about the hands he plays and folds for anyone who isn't an obsessive poker player to get much from it.