Poker
Holden is a keen poker player, and spent a year playing professionally while researching his 1990 book Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player (ISBN 0743294815), which has been praised by poker enthusiasts from David Mamet and Salman Rushdie to Walter Matthau and is frequently described as a 'cult classic'. The book covers his experiences between the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournaments in 1988 and 1989.
In 2007, Holden published Bigger Deal: A Year Inside the Poker Boom (ISBN 0743294823), a journal of his second stint as a professional player, between the 2005 and 2006 WSOP events.
In 2000 he won TV’s first Celebrity Late Night Poker on Channel 4, beating Al Alvarez, Martin Amis, Victoria Coren, Ricky Gervais, Patrick Marber and Stephen Fry. In 2005 he appeared on the chat show Heads Up with Richard Herring to discuss his life, career and his love of poker. In 2006 he represented England in TV’s World Cup of Poker, staged by PokerStars, for whom he was a sponsored player 2006-2008.
In 2009 he was elected the first President of the International Federation of Poker (IFP) at its founding congress in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is also President of the UK Poker Federation.
Read more about this topic: Anthony Holden
Famous quotes containing the word poker:
“The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)