Victoria Coren MitchellRezensionen

It really is pretty much about poker. If you were expecting a wider biography then you'd be disappointed, but even if you don't play, it's interesting to read about how you get better.

I like Victoria Coren when I see her on the telly. I follow her on twitter because she's witty and clever but still seems down to earth. So, even though I know nothing about poker, I thought I'd give her poker autobiography a go. It's a mixture of "how I fell in love with poker and the things that were going on in my life" and "how I became the first woman to win the European Poker Tour", with the autobiographical stuff making up the bulk of each chapter and then an analysis of that tournament winning series of games at the end. I had to read a glossary of poker terms to have the vaguest clue about what was going on in the game. I think I got my head around it 3/4s of the way in! Coren writes well, of course. She is honest about poker, affectionate about the poker family she has made, and very entertaining with her turns of phrase. The only card games I've ever played are Whist, Rummy and Pontoon, so maybe I wasn't at quite the disadvantage I thought I was, but I know that I would be useless at poker. All that analysing other people, working out the odds and deciding how much money to risk would tire me out. But then, I am extremely risk averse. Still, I enjoyed the book, even if it didn't turn me into a gambler.

A great read, framing Victoria Corens memoir with the crucial hands of the London EPT she won. Charts the highs and lows of her poker career along with the rest of her life. It's just a really readable book, which made me wish I too had a Tuesday night game to act as my constant in turbulent times!

I want to write something considered and intelligent about For Richer, For Poorer, but I keep just coming back to the fact that I loved this book. It is full of the quixoticism of the poker-player but doesn't try to romanticise the game as it charts Coren's evolution as a poker player and the massive changes in the game over the course of her career so far. Each chapter ends with a hand from the EPT championship (which will make more sense if you read the outline of poker at the back - why at the back? Why always at the back?) which has the effect of drawing you through the book, through the pain and the joy, until you discover you're compulsively reading it under the covers at 2am. And it's a good thing. This quixoticism stuff is infectious.

I've liked Victoria Coren ever since she wrote a column in the Telegraph when she was a teenager (and so was I). All the same I wasn't really expecting to enjoy a book about poker as much as I did. But it's a very entertaining read.

I didn't understand a lot of the poker sections but I did really enjoy the book and it kept me up late at night, desperate to read just one more chapter. I really liked the author's voice, and the sense of family she got from her motley crew of associated poker players. It also made me a bit curious about playing poker, which I've never really done before.