| Broke: A Poker Novel |  | Author: Brandon Adams
Publisher: IUniverse
List Price: $8.95
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 402,447
Media: Paperback
Pages: 98
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.3
ISBN: 158348471X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781583484715
ASIN: 158348471X
Publication Date: February 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Excellent, entertaining, and extremely well written I couldn't stop reading!-Phil Hellmuth, poker icon and author of Play Poker Like the ProsForget Wall Street-America's best and brightest now seek their fortunes at the poker tables. Broke: A Poker Novel follows the lives of three talented, young poker players as they chase fame and fortune in a world fraught with addiction. Raf Verheij is a twenty-five-year-old match prodigy who likes to think that his current situation is unique: poker pulled him out of a deep hole instead of leading him into one. Robert Thompson is a player who has an almost supernatural ability-reading opponents' hands by taking cues from their body language-and a huge gambling problem. And finally, there's Matt Ingram, a grinder with a penchant for all things self-destructive. It's a world where the individual has to worry less about the problems that others will cause him than the problems that he will cause for himself. Broke looks into the lives of Raf, Robert, and Matt in their high-stakes quest for gaining poker legend status and reveals just how addictive and dangerous the world of poker can be to one's bankroll and mental health.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 I can't tell you how much I wanted to like this book... June 30, 2009
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
Brandon Adams, Broke: A Poker Novel (iUniverse, 2006)
You may not recognize Brandon Adams' name if your only exposure to poker is the World Series, but if you watch any of the cash game programs that show up once in a while, he's quite familiar. Poker books are enjoying the best market share ever as well, so I was wondering why a novel with poker as its focus written by a recognizable poker pro would have been passed up by the major publishers. Then I read it.
First off, poker novel? Using the quick-and-dirty method of word counting (average umber of words from three random lines on a random page multiplied by number of lines per page multiplied by number of pages), Broke clocks in at just over twenty-seven thousand words, which barely makes it a poker novella. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, but one would expect a bit more meat. Secondly, when you're trying to tell a full novel-length story in that amount of time, something has to be sacrificed (and, as I'll get to later, far more than one thing fell by the wayside here). Thirdly, it seemed oftentimes as if some experts who write sports-based novels aimed at players of the game (Thoroughbred writer Mark Cramer, whose nonfiction books are fantastic, is also guilty of this in his novels) seem more as if they're writing how-to books and slapping a fictionalized veneer on top. I didn't get that sense all the way through this book, but it definitely reared its ugly head a few times.
As I said, a novel that runs only ninety-one pages sets the reader up for knowing that something is going to fall by the wayside. The first thing that's absent is character development. Adams does try to get some development across in each of his three main characters, but we never get to know them enough to know whether they're actually progressing here or whether these are just a series of events happening to them. This may have something to do with Adams' thoughts on gambling addiction (assuming they're the same as his main character's); the cyclical nature of addiction that he describes may well preclude the type of character development we (and he) expect from these characters. To be sure, one of them has different behavioral patterns by the end of the story, but the other two just serve to make us wonder how long it will be until he, too, is right back where they are.
Also, while the book does have some semblance of a plot, there's not much that ties the events in each (very short) chapter together (seventeen chapters in ninety-one pages), which adds fuel to the "object-lesson" model I mentioned before. There were a lot of things about the way the book is structured that put me in mind of Mark Cramer's Scared Money, but while I wasn't at all fond of Cramer's cook either, he has a much better sense of how to put a novel together than Adams. In other words, Cramer's book might have been a good novel had he been able to stop teaching long enough to allow the story to get his lessons across. Adams' novel doesn't have that; the underpinnings aren't there for it to hold up without the object lessons. The object lessons themselves contain some good stuff, and you may find the book worth your time because of a few particular situations Adams takes us through towards the end of the book--when he's talking hands, taking you through his thought processes, that's when everything falls into place and the words really start flowing. Unfortunately, there's too little of that. *
 Poker Diary, not a Novel December 20, 2008
Mark K. Anduss (Washington, DC)
This is effectively a collection of sections from Brandon's diary (perhaps poker diary). Each 'Chapter' starts with the date and location. The average chapter is 6 pages. This does make it easy to pause at logical places should you need to do something else during the 90 minutes it might take you to read it.
After a quick Internet search, it turns out the publisher is a self-publishing site. This really shows. No major house would have let this get to press. It does read well, but would be better in a collection of short works than as a stand alone 'novel'.
Good but short July 30, 2007
Brian L. Kriesel (Ann Arbor, Mi United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very good book that goes into an often overlooked part of poker that it is very hard to make a living playing poker. However, It is a VERY VERY short book.
 Good book if you have an interest of players personal background July 19, 2007
R. A. Spencer
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have read about half of this book. I'm having a little trouble following his group of fellow players, and how they fit into his life. Mr. Adams lack of personality reflects in his writing. That is not to say he does not know his stuff. His mathamatical knowledge is of the highest level, and does reflect on his poker play. I notice he's going deep in some of the World Series Events this year. I may add to this review once I complete the book. What I am reflecting on most from what I have read is how important poker is to me versus haing a quality healthy life.
waste of money December 30, 2006
Thomas M. Murphy
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
not really a book. its like 80 pages long. big disapointment. save your money.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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