Review: Distracted by Innacuracy
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 1, 2014
When the title of a book shouts "poker" and the setting of a book is Las Vegas one might expect some bit of accuracy from the poker material in the book. The protagonist of the book is a professional poker player and she buys into the main event of the World Series of Poker and then we find out that the ten thousand dollars is almost her entire bankroll. Not only would this be insane, but people do insane things, that bankroll is much too small for someone who is making a living at the game. However, one could rationalize some horrible expense that caused her to spend her bankroll and leave her so desperate that she did this.What is harder to rationalize is the mis-description of the main event. It has been some years since the final table of the main event was run directly after the final nine players were reached. It has also been quite some time since first prize in the event was only one million dollars. First prize is a fraction of the number of entries times the entry fee. At one point, when it looked like first prize was going to be close to a million, the Binions decided it would be one million, even if the number of entries didn't quite justify it. And the number of players at the final table has always been nine.I guess we can imagine that this is a World Poker Tour event and all of these errors would go away.The good things about this book made it worth reading anyway but it wasn't easy to suspend disbelief. And the protagonist is too easily distracted by some of the men in the story to be a believable pro, Although she is a fun character. She needed to read _Poker for Cats_ by Feather, where he says "hunting is hunting and mating is mating. The prey has no gender."