Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Belter, 23 Sep 2009
A lifetime ago I saw Vicky Coren in a pub in Oxford. Didnt know her from Adam Dalgliesh at the time - she stuck in my mind because although she looked like a right posh bird, she laughed like a cross between Sid James and Dot Cotton.
A few years later she turned out to be An Famous and more especially, An Famous who played cards on the telly. An Famous who played cards on the telly, who I'd seen in a pub. Brilliant. Pub Story Gold. According to the rules of popular culture she became an anecdotal fixture in my life whenever poker, laughing and/or posh birds came up in the conversation.
"That Vicky Coren, yeah she used to drink in my local, got the best laugh in the world that girl, and she plays cards on the telly. She's lovely she is."
All based on nothing of course but clearly repeated often enough to ensure that when Once More With Feeling hit the bookstores I got 7 copies as birthday presents. I had to return 6 of them and to this day I'm still known to the staff in my local bookshop as "the porn book guy".
So, skip some years and replay the scene. This year I only got 4 copies of For Richer, For Poorer - clearly I've lost some mates over the years - but still not a bad show. In the birthday gift Top 10 that got her third spot behind some rather nice malt whisky and a painting by Sadie Hennessy - a good result for a random, one anecdote, half serious, 14 year old, pretend celebrity crush.
And now she's gone and ruined it.
Not only has she written one of the most honest books about the poker lifestyle ever, but in a surprise move she's thrown the rules of conventional Celeb-Biography out of the window - she's only gone and been straight up about herself.
No more mysterious, half imagined, poker playing posh bird with a cockney sparrow laugh, no more saucy funny bird tucked up on Charlie "it's not a panel show" Brooker's silly chair. Oh sure, she's still An Famous but now she's gone and revealed herrself as an actual real life person. A real person who has the same thrills and spills as the rest of us. A real person who gets down about herself sometimes, who sometimes gets overdrawn at the bank, who muddles on just like we all do. How on earth am I supposed to have a pretend celebrity crush on her now? Play the game Coren!
I suppose we had a good run but it looks like I'll have to buff up the Tracey Emin anecdote now and god alone knows where that'll all end up.
Buy this book. It's a belter, and so by all accounts is she.
|
|
|
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent, 16 Sep 2009
Having been an avid reader of Vicky's poker column in the Guardian, I was looking forward to reading this and my expectations were first well and truly met, then overwhelmingly exceeded. The book flows beautifully.
Vicky describes how she fell in love with poker at an early age, first the romance surrounding the game then the game itself. Each chapter is interspersed with key hands from *that* London EPT tournament. We follow Vicky through the early days at the Vic, vegas, and Late Night Poker. From the tuesday night home games to the WSOP. Heartfelt and heartbreaking, this is a rollercoaster read matching the rollercoaster of Vicky's relationships; with the game, the players and her family. It goes without saying that this is a must-read for any poker player - it will resonate with anyone who has picked up a few chips or a hand of cards and felt those first flutters of fear and excitement. But this book has broader appeal than just poker players.
I usually read quickly. But this is the first book in a long while that I've slowed down and savoured. It's magnificent, classy, elegant, and very very funny!
|
|
|
13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You don't have to play poker, 11 Sep 2009
My copy arrived today and I read it all and loved it. it's a gripping story and you don't have to play poker to enjoy it. Here is a review from a magazine The Literary Review that I read online and I completely endorse it:
"First porn and now poker. In Once More, With Feeling, Victoria Coren described her attempts to make an erotic film. Now, in this memoir, she writes about her love of poker. She's unusual, not only for being a woman in what is still largely a male-dominated game, but also because she is an excellent player and writer. Many poker journalists are on the outside, peering in at a game they haven't fully mastered, and their books are often slightly disappointing - they're fine if you haven't read the others, but they all rake over the same old ground, digging up the same old mouldy corpses. You can only read about the glory days so many times.
For Richer, For Poorer, however, is fresh, funny and moving. Coren writes insightfully about love, obsession, depression and illness - and poker, obviously, and how it helped her cope with life. She grew up watching her brother play with his friends and longed to join in this game, with its rituals and secret language - nuts, trips, bullets, etc. And she did play, in whatever games she could find, learning and losing, and gradually getting better. During this time, poker changed, from a game played by a few in smoky backrooms to one played by millions, with great glitzy corporate tournaments. Then in 2006 the author's own life changed: she won the European Poker Tour championship, netting $1m and creating a history of her own. And so she concentrates on that, with little need to borrow the stories of others, replaying the action of the final table at the EPT in short alternate chapters. Rarely has poker been written about so well, with drama and wit, and none of the usual tired virility.
Best of all, Coren engages with the question of what makes the game so enthralling and addictive to her and so many others. It isn't just the mental challenge, nor is it simply a gambling lust. Rather, it's the sense of belonging to a community of natural nonconformists who have at last found rules they are happy to live by. She feels more at home here than anywhere else - family, friends, all belong to another world. But the bond is purely one of poker. Talk about outside life to a stranger at the table and you're committing an unpardonable sin, reminding them of what drove them there in the first place. As Coren puts it, `Poker wasn't about fame, it was about hiding.' It is also about loneliness. She writes, `I love the underworld. I love the screwed-up people, I finally fit in and I am happy.' And they're certainly screwed-up. Some of them have obvious appeal, some of them don't. Coren compares it all to the world of Damon Runyan. But that, like P.G. Wodehouse's Mayfair or Blandings, didn't exist. Both writers gave charm and glamour to those who never had it.
I haven't met nearly as many poker greats as Coren, but the ones that I have come across have tended to be disappointingly ordinary - even dull. Sitting and staring at small bits of plastic and paper for hour after hour, day after day, year after year, does little for the personality. And the discipline of the successful card player rarely extends to the rest of their life. But she knows this and forgives all: `With few exceptions, I love anyone who plays poker, who spends their life in the card room, who is hiding from something and chasing something, who knows there may be a better life elsewhere but is a little too frightened to look for it, who lets the invisible clock tick down as they play hand after hand after hand.'
I'll leave it to other critics to brandish their poker clichés now. But this is a wonderful book, worthy of comparison with the best - Al Alvarez's The Biggest Game In Town. Read them both."
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Mike Matusow
by Brandon Adams
by Jesse May
by Al Alvarez
