But I have a justification, admittedly pathetic. I've decided it's okay if the books I review are poker books that are really about life. We say stuff like, "hey, man, marked cards poker is life." Right?
So far I've got two books in this 'poker = life' category: Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker, and Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson's One of a Kind, the brilliant unpacking of the life of the tormented Stuey Ungar.
Let's add a third, Roy Brindley's Life's a Gamble. Like the others, it is more about life than about the game itself. You won't learn strategy here but you will have trouble putting it down.
Brindley is a gambler, as the title tells you.
He is a sick, demented, compulsive, self-destructive gambler with a deep streak of insecurity, an almost pitiable desire to be loved and accepted, a crazy longing for what he thinks is the "good life," the "cash in pocket" life style: fast cars, big houses, booze, women and it's all wrapped up in an ego the size of Ireland, which is where he now lives with the loyal Meg, their two children and a Ferrari with a blown engine and maybe, just maybe, the life he thinks he wants.
Who knows? I, for one, wouldn't put much loose change on his future.
But, no matter. The book is a wonderfully insightful, sometimes painful revelation of how a working-class bloke from Southampton struggles through it all.
An unloved
Brindley's a compulsive gambler, of this there is no doubt. He knows it and you will too. But, as the tale unfolds, it becomes clear that the real problem isn't gambling in any simple way. It's losing. And as he loses, he dreams, romanticizing about the big one, the "life-changer" of a win that will fulfill the fantasy.
Back in the '80's Howard Sartin developed the 'pace' method for handicapping racehorses. Sartin, a psychotherapist, frustrated over his lack of success treating problem gamblers decided, instead, to teach them
And so it was with Brindley. Poker took a pathetic loser betting the dogs, horses and sports and made him a winner. He is now forty, has his family and considerable wealth but the reader knows that he can, in a New York minute, succumb to that irresistible tug to unwrap his bankroll and mix it up.
I loved the book and 'Roy the Boy,' his poker moniker --- and I can no more resist a quick analysis of Mr. Brindley than he can pass a bookmaker without tossing a couple of quid on a nag at Epsom.
At the core, Brindley is a deeply sensitive fellow and a rather fragile one. He is also ingenuous and open about his failings and honest about them to a fault, a tendency that often has unhappy consequences.
He is so emotionally vulnerable that sessions of poor play, tournaments that end short of his goals (and hopes) can totally derail him, shake his confidence and wreck his game.
He lets remarks that are simply one-offs from frustration get to him. A crack from Howard Lederer, for example, that denigrates Brindley's play sets him off in a spiral of depression. Simply getting needled by opponents in Vegas, a tactic designed to put players off their game, does just that.
There are cultural elements Brindley doesn't seem to recognize. He learned the game in Europe where decorum rules, where even talking at the table is frowned on and is despairing of boorish Americans.
But then, while doing poker commentary for British TV, he insensitively makes religious and ethnic slurs. He also ends up good buddies with Tony G, one of poker's most notorious trash talkers.
For someone who spent so much of his life in betting shops, at race tracks, casinos and poker rooms, he can be card cheating astonishing naïve.
At Binion's for the WSOP, he spots a single-deck blackjack table, a card-counter's wet dream. He starts betting $2 a hand, wins consistently, boosts his bets way up and then is astonished and appalled when he gets that fatal tap on the shoulder from a large gentleman telling him his action is no longer welcome.
How this can be a surprise to someone who developed his own card counting system (apparently never having read or even heard of Thorpe, Uston or Snyder) and was so successful that he got barred from every casino in England, is beyond me.
He is also proud that he has survived this life without ever doing drugs. He seems not to realize that alcohol is a drug. He drinks copiously, explaining in a painfully defensive way, that he likes to drink while playing poker, especially tournaments, that it calms him and allows him to focus.
The tale of winning a tournament so plastered that he couldn't make out the cards and then passed out, leaving the loyal Meg to bag up the prize money, should be a warning. It appears not to be.
He ends upbeat, believing he has vanquished his demons, mended his ways, conquered his insecurities and doubts. I hope he has. I really do.
A note: The book is written for a British audience. The old line rings true about the US and the UK: 'two great lands separated by a common language.' Many passages will be cryptic to a North American reader and many words will be strange. But that's okay. Just plow through; they'll start feeling familiar after a while.
Author Bio:
Arthur Reber has been a poker player and serious handicapper of thoroughbred horses for four decades. He is the author of The New Gambler's Bible and coauthor of Gambling for Dummies. Formerly a regular columnist for Poker Pro Magazine and Fun 'N' Games magazine, he has also contributed to Card Player (with Lou Krieger), Poker Digest, Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Titan Poker. He outlined a new framework for evaluating the ethical and moral issues that emerge in gambling for an invited address to the International Conference of Gaming and Risk Taking.
Until recently he was the Broeklundian Professor of Psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his various visiting professorships was a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Now semiretired, Reber is a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
没有评论:
发表评论