Being an avid poker player, as well as a pseudo-semi-avid reader, I’ve dealt my way through my share of poker books. So when I was at the bookstore looking for books with cool covers, imagine my delight at spotting The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King (Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time), by Michael Craig.

Banker Lawyer Cover

Obviously, I couldn’t resist betting $24 on it (a big blind bet, if you will). The book tells the story of how Andy Beal, a banker from Texas, managed to set up a heads-up poker game between himself and a group of professional players in Las Vegas for the highest stakes ever played. It’s an interesting story, with some interesting characters. [hit that danged old ‘more’ link to read on…]

In fact, probably the most interesting parts of the book for me were the background stories of some of the characters. Take Andy Beal, for instance. He was a complete do-it-yourselfer who became a billionaire. Remember the old Steve Martin gag about “Fred’s Bank”? Well, he pretty much did that — created Beal Bank, and got rich. I was pretty familiar with many of the other background stories, about the individuals who made up the pool of players who combined their bankrolls to take turns playing Andy Beal. And whereas I was hoping to get some insights into the types of hands that were played at these stakes and some of the poker moves the players made, those types of details were very sparse. The normal recap would be something along the lines of “the cards ran cold for Andy” or “Andy played very aggressively”, and then you’d find out who won how much in that given session. Granted, the amounts are staggering (they reached a point where they were playing with $100,000 and $200,000 blinds, where any given pot could reach into the millions of dollars), but once you got over that shock, it lost some of its luster.

For anyone familiar with the current poker scene, and with the game itself, this book frankly isn’t that interesting. Where I was looking for some juicy tidbits about the players and the specific games that were played in this epic match, the book seems to be more about name dropping than substance. And if you like that, then enjoy this: Blah, blah, blah, Doyle Brunson. Blah, blah, blah, Howard Lederer. Blah, blah, blah, Johnny Chan. Blah, blah, blah, Jennifer Harmon.

You get the point. So anyone who has only sparing familiarity with the game of poker and its current crop of top professionals might find this a fun read. But for money players, this was pretty much dead money.