For Richer, for Poorer: My Love Affair with Poker, by Victoria Coren
"It is about a magical world. Down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, under the sea, over the rainbow, behind the wardrobe door, there is a place where time stops" (335).
Amazon blurb: "In September 2006, Victoria Coren won a million dollars on the European Poker Tour. In her long-awaited memoir, she tells the story of that victory, but also of a 20-year obsession with the game. It is a journey which has taken Coren from a secret culture of illegal cash games to the high-stakes glamour of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, and brought with it friendship, laughter, and money, but also loneliness, heartbreak, and defeat."
This book was off my radar for a while. I knew it was around but assumed (wrongly) that it was "just another poker memoir" that I could safely wait to read. Thankfully, RussellinToronto mentioned that he enjoyed
For Richer, For Poorer, so I decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did.
A Poker-Playing Alice
The book bleeds Britishness: there's life at the Vic, the slang, the Devilfish, and lots of references to Alice in Wonderland (one of my favorite books
).Vicky Coren comes from the British school of poker writers-- Al Alvarez, Anthony Holden, David Spaniel--famous for their incisive prose, wit, and the infamous Tuesday Game.Like these guys, Coren struggles with the question of identity, of whether she's a poker-playing writer or a poker player who writes. She distinguishes herself from her distinguished company by winning a major tournament.
Another difference, of course, is that Coren is a woman. Among other poker-playing woman writers, only Katy Lederer comes to mind (my thoughts on that book here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=211). But Coren's book is better: whereas Lederer writes gracefully about her brother, she's a curious outsider to the poker world and the Vegas lifestyle. Coren, on the other hand, lives and breathes poker: she needs it, thrives on it, romances it just as others would wine and dine a lover.
Why is the book so good? Basically this: "because behind the light, it's-only-me style, Coren is a serious and scrupulous writer. She has taken real care with the macro stuff – the structure of the book, the changes of pace, the link passages, the just-right narrative tug, the changes of emotional register, the careful parsing out of the technical information to ensure that it never overwhelms the exhilaration of the action."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/200...r-poorer-coren
(The structure, to elaborate a bit, is simple but effective: the book moves chronologically through Coren's life, beginning with her childhood and moving through the various stages of her poker career. At the end of each chapter, in a short italicized section, we "play a hand" with Vicky during the final table of her EPT win. Eventually these two parts dovetail, with Coren narrating the victory that transformed her into a bona-fide poker celebrity.)
And this: "she has also taken real care with all the micro stuff – the sentence-by-sentence work, the phrasing, the rhythms and cadences of the poker-language, the descriptions of people and place, the lack of cliche, apposite metaphors, well-deployed dialogue, smells, tastes and the neat opening and closing of sections."
I'd add a third reason: honesty. Coren is unflinching open, sometimes painfully so, about her need for poker, human connection, and the contradictions that we all face at and away from the table. "I get it now," she writes. "Feeling alienated, isolated, thinking dark thoughts even as you laugh at jokes, saying 'Nice hand' even as you feel crushed, being among them but not of them, that is being one of them. Sitting around a table with a bunch of people who feel as cut off as you are, at least some of the time; that is community. We are all imperfect in the Vic, and if we weren't we wouldn't be here" (208).
Ever Drifting Down the Stream
Since
For Richer, For Poorer was published in 2008, Coren's story has been largely a happy one: after winning the EPT she's remained a public figure, writer, and poker commentator (and I think a game show host too?). She married in 2012. In April 2014 she won EPT San Remo for just under 500K, making her the only player with two EPT titles.
Parts of her life, like her book, have been bittersweet. As some readers will know, Coren left Pokerstars because the site plans to offer table games. “Poker is the game I love, poker is what I signed up to promote," she wrote last January. "The question I’m probably asked most often in interviews is about the danger of addiction, going skint and so on. I’m always careful to explain the difference between the essentially fair nature of poker, where we all take each other on with the same basic chance, and those casino games at unfavourable odds which can be (especially online) so dangerous for the vulnerable or desperate. "(
http://www.victoriacoren.com/main/bl...odbye_team_pro). To me, this departures proves a claim from Coren's memoir: that, for her, poker has never been about money.
Notes and Questions
"We tell these gloomy tales to exorcise them, not because we need them listened to. The rhythm of the words...up and down...with the flush draw...bet the pot...the turn comes over...is like a gentle piece of familiar background music" (3)
one example: "Pairs are so pretty, so enticingly symmetrical. Two curvy jacks, like Christmas stockings hanging in a fireplace. Or two round, juicy queens, like quail on a rotisserie. Two spiky kings, determined and macho, like marching soldiers in profile. Two clean, sharp, pure aces. God, I love looking down at my hole cards and finding a pair of matching picture cards. Painted twins" (15).
topics of conversation at the table (58)
the river (95)
time (155)
gambling as classless (174)
Vegas (231)
"They are creatures of contradiction - they are fiercely greedy, lavishly generous, wary in many things, reckless of life, ready to take any advantage, yet possessed by a diseased sense of honor." James Runciman (1895)
God and luck (295)
Cliffs
For Richer, For Poorer is probably the best poker memoir I've read. Two challenges of the genre is making the poker discussion accessible and making yourself a compelling character. Coren achieves both tasks remarkably well.