The poker world lost one of its finest authors when Anthony Holden passed away at age 76. Holden penned, translated, and edited nearly 40 books during his illustrious career as a journalist and writer. “Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player” is considered one of the best books ever written about poker, and it chronicled Holden's journey into the gambling underworld in Las Vegas in the late 1980s.
The poker world said farewell to one of its greatest scribes when English writer and journalist Anthony Holden passed away over the weekend. Holden was a true gonzo journalist who was never shy about diving head first into a story.
Leading up to the glorious online poker boom, there were very few books penned about poker -- including strategy, nonfiction, and fiction. If you visited a bookstore in the late 1990s, you could fit all of the published poker books on one shelf. One of them was written by Holden.
If you fell in love with poker in the late 1990s or early 2000s, then you devoured every possible book in the genre. At the turn of the century, every serious poker player had the same five or so books in their collection. Among them were Super System by Doyle Brunson, Big Deal by Anthony Holden, The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez, and Jess May's novel Shut Up and Deal.
I revered literary giants like Holden, Alvarez, and May when I first dipped my toe into the poker world and flirted with the idea of writing a poker blog. I felt like a mere mortal in their literary presence as I pecked away on my keyboard at 4am and updated my half-baked poker blog during the earliest days of the poker boom.
When I got a chance to finally write my own book after I moved to Las Vegas to cover the World Series of Poker during the apex of the poker boom, I wanted to capture a seminal piece of poker history like Holden achieved with Big Deal in the late 1980s and Alvarez did with The Biggest Game in Town in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
I had no shortage of imposter syndrome during the gravy days of the online poker boom because I knew deep down that I could never reach the same level of poker's literary Mount Rushmore. Holden's book Big Deal was an endless source of inspiration at the start of my wild journey. Without Big Deal and Holden, there would be no Tao of Poker and Lost Vegas. Holden and Alavarez blazed the original trail, and I was thrilled and honored to follow in their Godzilla-sized footsteps.
In 1990, Holden's first poker book reached the marketplace. Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player is the kind of non-fiction book that tantalized intellectuals and the literati in the early 1990s. It was classic highbrow meets lowbrow and the convergence of the British intelligentsia and the American wild-wild west.
Even 33 years after its initial publication in 1990, Big Deal still holds up as one of the best books ever written about poker, the WSOP, and Las Vegas. Holden magnificently captured the insanity of spending a year on the poker circuit starting in1989 and ending with the 1990 WSOP.
Holden stood on the edge of the gambling abyss at the end of the 1980s and captured the tail end of "old" Vegas a decade before online poker was birth in the late 1990s.
In the cult-classic movie Rounders, Mike McD was driven by a dream to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player. Holden's Big Deal perfectly captured the poker world of that pre-digital era, which had no shortage of wacky characters, hardcore gamblers, and outright criminals.
Holden provided a rare glimpse into the gambling world that not too many people had a chance to experience before the modern poker media apparatus was established. Big Deal was not just a snapshot of the poker world in 1989 but it was also time machine that zapped you back to Sin City in the late 1980s during the tail end of Ronald Reagan's America and the "greed is good" mentality that defined the decade.
Holden penned a follow up to Big Deal titled Bigger Deal: A Year Inside the Poker Boom, which was published in 2007 and takes places 15 years after Big Deal. In the sequel, Holden is smack in the middle of the global online poker boom which coincides with his own mid-life crisis.
Once again, Holden bookends his gambling journey with two trips to the WSOP in the Bigger Deal. He starts with the 2005 WSOP and ends with the 2006 WSOP, and plays poker all over the world in between.
Holden's sequel focused on a poker world at the height of the internet poker boom. He's second foray into poker in the mid-2000s barely resembled the grimy, smoke-filled world of downtown Las Vegas that was stuffed with zany characters, old-grizzled gamblers, and other sordid souls who fell through the cracks in society. In the 21st Century, poker had gone big time and became entwined with pop culture. It was no longer an outlaw pursuit or an old-man's game with an infux of younger players thanks to the conduit of online poker.
When Holden played in the 1990 WSOP at Binion's Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas, only 194 players were in the Main Event. Mansour Matloubi banked $835,000 for the victory with a total prize pool worth under $2 million.
When Holden returned to Las Vegas in 2006, the WSOP had moved to the Rio Casino off the Strip. The 2006 WSOP Main Event attracted 8,773 runners a prize pool worth $82.5 million with $12 million set aside to the eventual champion.
Holden is well known in literary circles, especially in England for his biographies on the Royal Family. He was a poet, magazine editor, and penned or edited almost 40 books on a variety of topics including Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Laurence Olivier, Don Giovanni, the Oscars, and of course poker.
Holden wrote multiple books on the Royal Family including the Queen Mother. He penned best sellers on Prince Charles and Princess Diana, and was even chummy with the former Princess of Wales.
Holden is a throwback journalist. He thrived at a time when writers huffed down cigarettes while pecking away at a typewriter. He relished the sepia-tinged era of boozy lunches with colleagues and long phone calls with well-informed sources.
Holden rode that last groovy wave in the late 20th Century as a well-respected print journalist who had the luxury of securing six-figure book deals and the opportunity to embark on a year-long sabbatical to write a book about one of their loves and passion projects.
Holden ascended the nadir of print journalism as the last vestige of writers who could support themselves with a single job at newspaper or magazine where you could delve into hard hitting, long-form pieces without alienating attention-deficit Philistines or worrying about modern-day headlaches llike clickbait titles, traffic numbers, monetization, or SEO.
Holden wrote for The Sunday Times throughout the 1970s. He was honored with a prestigious award in the early 1970s, which was akin to winning the Rookie of the Year, when he was named the Young Journalist of the Year in 1972. His coverage on "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland earned him accolades and awards. Holden won the News Reporter of the Year in 1976, and was named Columnist of the Year in 1977.
Holden turned his eyes to American politics in the 1980s. He headed to the States as a Washington correspondent for The Observer and was the editor of its US version. While covering the grandiose circus in DC, he also wrote nine books in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, Holden wrote ten more books and embraced his passion for poker and Shakespeare.
In the 2000s, Holden had the opportunity to write about his adoration of music as the chief classical music critic of The Observer.
Holden published his last book in 2021 with his memoir titled Based on a True Story: A Writer's Life.
It would be cool if Holden the journalist gets the documentary film treatment, especially about his stellar work covering Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s. I also hope that Holden will posthumously get recognized -- with well overdue accolades -- for his contributions by laying some the groundwork of the stupendous online poker boom with the Big Deal.
RIP Tony Holden. An OG. An inspiration. A real one.
The poker world lost one of its finest authors when Anthony Holden passed away at age 76. Holden penned, translated, and edited nearly 40 books during his illustrious career as a journalist and writer. “Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player” is considered one of the best books ever written about poker, and it chronicled Holden's journey into the gambling underworld in Las Vegas in the late 1980s.
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Anthony Holden, author of 'Big Deal' and 'Bigger Deal'
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