One Year as a Professional Poker Player
by Anthony Holden
Recommended by Daniel Negreanu
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Reading this feels like shadowing a curious travel writer who has wandered into a closed-off subculture. Holden spends a year embedded with professional poker players across Las Vegas, Malta, Morocco and at sea, narrating hands, personalities, and barroom repartee while folding in moments of self-reflection. What works best is lively, anecdotal immersion — scenes of stakes, banter, and travel that bring the game to life. The main limitation is repetition and jargon: narrative momentum stalls when similar stories and name-dropping pile up, and it offers little in the way of practical poker instruction.
This summary and audience guidance are AI-generated from the book's description and its recommendation history, last updated June 2026. Recommendations, quotes and sources elsewhere on this page come from published material and are not generated.
The story of a year spent by biographer Anthony Holden in the tough world of the professional poker player. He spent days and nights in the poker paradise of Las Vegas, in Malta and Morocco, even shipboard, mingling with the legendary greats, sharpening his game, perfecting his repartee, and learning a great deal about himself in the process. Poker...
Difficulty:hard
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View available editions on AmazonWhy recommended
Recommended by 2 sources and appears in Most Recommended Books and Nonfiction.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Daniel Negreanu
““@Dom_Chez: @RealKidPoker favorite poker book(s)” Positively Fifth Street, The Big Deal, and The Biggest Game in Town #oldschool”
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Consider Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II by Dan Harrington.
“Dense, methodical and example-heavy, Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II walks through turn and river play with hand-by-hand breakdowns and clear attention to practical decision points. The most useful material is the stepwise reasoning on multi-street decisions and when to shift between value-betting and pot control. The main limitation is repetition and technical depth: long analytical passages and repeated examples can feel dry, and the book expects patience and some prior cash-game experience.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
