[chessforlife]

"Dude, i'm curious, why did you name yourself chessforlife?"

Because a while ago i was starting a chess program in the nearby school.

"I do wonder how much of the charachter is the author. I'd be suprised if it was less than 70%."

I imagine it would be at least 80% because it's just too authentic sounding. If the writer is entirely making Mic Jameson up, then he would have to be a genius, but like I said, I think it's almost all Jonathan Maxwell. I think it's no coincidence that the names Mic Jameson and Jonathan Maxwell are opposites.

"I think a favorite attribute of the book is when he addmittedly does so many stupid things, like when in Atlantic City he excitedly sits down, 6-bets the preflop with rags, and calls to the river and the guy has aces, and he says "What the hell did I just do?" lol."

I agree. I'd say the strongest part of the book is how honest it is. Mic is not trying to impress you. he's just living his life in front of you.

I think the brief Atlantic City part was my favorite. There is a lot of quality, juicy writing there: the drunk optometrist, the East Coast player critique, the commentary about the petty arguements to the floorman, the walk outside to the Tropicana, and the dialogue with Alfonse. It was about here that i decided this would be a favorite book of mine.

"And how funny was the plane ride to Paris, with his fear of flying, and then the critique of poker movies. Honestly one of my criticisms is that the writing is too sparse. But it is 284 pages. I wonder how long were the other drafts."

The plane rides were very funny. I like the sparse writing. it kept a nice high pace to the story.

"It is true that both Maxwell and the publisher had bravery to print this. Many people are going to be insulted by much of its content. But I think an important point is that it's no more than 1 person's opinion. I'm not sure it can live up to it's lofty bac cover quote of "the definitive poker novel." because it's a minority view of poker. I don't know though. Maybe it is, in a way, the perfect comment on poker, that its incredibly frustrating, but fun enough to continue."

It is true that this will be a controversial book. I've been seeing a lot of comments that people are impressed with the bravery of this book.

Most of all I was left with a feeling that from all the copycat pokerbooks now on the market, here is one that was written because the guy truly had something to say, and to me this was like a breath of fresh air.