Broke: A Poker Novel

This book is not really for beginners. Like most other books, it does not discuss poker strategy or probabilities and stuff like that. In every poker book you read what bankroll you need and when you can move up to higher stakes. IT IS THE GOAL OF MOST PLAYERS TO MOVE UP TO HIGHER STAKES. That of course was also my goal, make a living playing poker. This book shows the downside of (semi-)professional poker players. Why you want to move up, why you cant sleep at night and so on. It shows how a player went broke, it shows that poker is highly addictive. I realized, I am no exception to the people he describes. I found tendencies of myself in almost every chapter. I read the book twice. And since I did that, I adjusted my goals I want to reach by playing poker. I still love the game, I am still dreaming of the big win, but the way I want to achieve it, changed. I just love this book.

I agree with all of the other reviews in that this is a great read! Even though the book is fiction I imagine the experiences are real. My only complaint is I would have liked more. The book is slightly less than a hundred pages. Maybe there will be a sequel which I would gladly purchase.

Anyone who has played poker at all will realize why this is such an incredible book after reading the first ten pages. Adams does a superb job of packing a thrilling, action-packed story into a short read. Perhaps the writing is so good because of Adams' own varied experience in the poker realm, which includes a final table appearance at the 05 WSOP Tournament of Champions. This book defines the new breed of poker players in the same way that Liar's Poker captured the culture of Wall Street in the 1980s.

Broke takes you on a ride that only high limit poker players have been on. This book is a collection of short stories that some of us in the poker world remember all too well. While fiction, Broke is based heavily in real life experiences from Brandon Adams' poker playing adventures. A chronical of degenerative exploits, this book is a must read for anyone who plays poker or loves gambling!

There's wonderful poker non-fiction and short stories, but poker novels are rare and usually contain either unrealistic poker (i.e. Richard Jessup's The Cincinnati Kid and Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm) or are just bad novels. Ten years ago, Rick Bennet wrote King of a Small World, a realistic account of professional club players of that era, and an impressive novel in its own right. Now Brandon Adams has done the same for the modern educated, mathematical, high stakes Internet and tournament players, what some people call the "new new thing" players. The hip, jagged, spare intensely introspective prose perfectly mimics the feeling of marathon poker sessions for high stakes. The characters veer wildly near anomie on one side and passionately involved self-destruction on the other, but are poker players enough to retain the control to survive with identities intact. The book has a disassociated time sense in which the rapidity of multitabling on the Internet and the deep thought before the clock is called in a television tournament acquire the same rhythm, and life in between fades into background. The deceptively simple writing tells a story on many levels, this is one of those books you read in one sitting, then immediately read again.