For Richer For Poorer, by Victoria Coren

This is a poker memoir, a genre that has grown unexpectedly in recent years with the general boom in gambling. The classics of this genre are Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town and Tony Holden’s Big Deal, which was followed by a more glum follow up, Bigger Deal, about poker’s growth from disreputable backroom game into multinational industry. Coren’s book covers the same period, only she’s less glum – the explosion in poker playing is exciting to her, and she’s pretty successful too. She becomes addicted early on, just before the game expands, and soon she’s playing on ‘Celebrity Late Night Poker’ with the likes of Stephen Fry and Martin Amis, but also Alvarez and Holden. Like Holden, she bemoans the way that internet-born maths introverts have largely replaced the characters who used to play the game. But hers is a more balanced view, finding contemporary players she has great affection for, and scrutinising those old ‘characters’ to find them less fascinating than previously thought. As far as poker books go, this isn’t quite the all time champ, but it can certainly sit a table with Alvarez and Holden without embarrassment. Shut up and deal! [Nat Smith]