Bigger Deal

Anthony Holden’s book Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player has become a cult classic, enjoying no fewer than six editions since its first publication in 1990, with worldwide sales now well into six figures. His long-awaited sequel, Bigger Deal: A Year on the New Poker Circuit, published in May 2007, also launched this website.

A veteran of the legendary Tuesday Night game, Holden was introduced to poker by his lifelong friend Al Alvarez, whom he first met while a student in 1968. A Vegas regular since the late 1970s, Holden won the first Celebrity Late Night Poker in 2000 – and last year won his WSOP ‘main event’ entry by beating three world champions (Joe Hachem, Greg Raymer and Chris Moneymaker) in a London tournament organized by PokerStars.com. He has since been a PokerStars-sponsored player on the European Poker Tour while writing his next book, Holden on Hold'em, due in 2008.

A prolific writer with a wide range of interests and enthusiasms, Holden is also well-known for his biographies of such disparate figures as Shakespeare and Tchaikovsky, Laurence Olivier and the Prince of Wales. He has written a a history of Hollywood’s Oscars, and the true-crime book The Saint Albans Poisoner, filmed as The Young Poisoner's Handbook. His most recent books are biographies of the Romantic poet-critic Leigh Hunt, The Wit in the Dungeon, and Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, The Man Who Wrote Mozart. Holden has also translated operas for English National Opera and Greek pastoral poetry for Penguin Classics.

Born in Lancashire and educated at Oxford, Holden enjoyed an award-winning career in journalism before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster after a public row with Rupert Murdoch while assistant editor of The Times in 1982. Columnist of the Year at the Sunday Times, also honoured in the British Press Awards for his reporting from Northern Ireland, Holden has also been US editor of The Observer, based in Washington DC, and was founder-editor of Eddy Shah’s Today newspaper in 1985-6. He is now (in between poker games) classical music critic of The Observer.

Holden’s three sons – Sam, Joe and Ben – are all classy poker players whom you might well run into in BiggerDeal.com tourneys. Like their father, they are all passionate supporters of Arsenal FC.

Holden’s poker slogan ? "Always expect the worst…"

Anthony's Blogs

• 05 Jul 2008 - 2008 WSOP – Day 1b
  The date being the Fourth of July, players were issued with America (and other) flags as they entered the Amazon Room for Day 1b of the Main Event, which began with a country-n-western version of the US national anthem before reigning champ Jerry Yang intoned the ritual cry of ‘Shuffle up and deal’. Britain’s Victoria […]
• 04 Jul 2008 - 2008 WSOP – Day 1a
  Ambling down the long Rio corridor towards the Amazon Room, scene of the WSOP tournaments, I found myself ambling alongside Australian cricketer-turned-poker player Shane Warne. (In the flesh, since you ask, he’s bigger and burlier than expected). That puts a new spin on the state of play hereabouts. Tennis champ Boris Becker has also turned […]
• 03 Jul 2008 - 2008 WSOP – The Year of the Pro
  Way down below the picture-window of my 52nd-floor suite atop the Palms Hotel-Resort, framed by the stunningly beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains on the horizon, the Rio hotel-casino looks the size of a matchbox. Head downstairs and struggle across the road in the 110-degree heat, however, and it soon returns to scale : the imposing if […]
• 24 Jun 2008 - THE TUESDAY GAME IS BACK !
  I’m off to Vegas this weekend, and will start reporting here next week on this year’s World Series of Poker - including my own progress (or, just possibly, lack of it) in the Main Event. I’ll be playing as a ‘Friend of PokerStars’, a new category of player sponsored by the world’s biggest poker website – […]
• 19 May 2008 - Vote Obama – poker player !
  Expertise at poker used to be an unwritten job requirement for all would-be US Presidents. Proficient White House poker-players have ranged from Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Harding to FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon. We poker players can only be expected to approve. Were I a US citizen, the poker-playing candidate […]
• 11 Mar 2008 - TUESDAY NIGHT GAME VI – sign up for 18 March !
  Among those who played in our February tournament was the poker correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, David Flusfeder, whom I know to be a stylish guy as well as a classy player; he managed to get into the money in the ‘main event’ of last year’s WSOP. David is a novelist and screen-writer as well […]
• 20 Feb 2008 - Duck milks cow
  The main news to emerge from our fifth Tuesday Night Game, sponsored by PokerStars, is that there is now a baby cow in Tipperary named Tony Holden. This singular honour came my way around 1.30 a.m., thanks to a communications breakdown during the frenzied heads-up that climaxed a feisty final table. After a deal made by […]
• 14 Feb 2008 - To bet or not to bet?
  Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, was check-raising the Duke of Somerset. The Earl of Salisbury was mulling a bet from Sir Humphrey Stafford, whose brother Sir William was staring down My Lord of Say. Boy, was this was some unusual poker tournament. At the dinner break, bread and soup (with a dash of vodka) was served […]
• 14 Feb 2008 - Tuesday Night Game V
  Math(s), as readers of my poker books will know, has never been my strong suit. But I do now know what ‘exponential’ actually means. The number of starters in our Tuesday Night Game tournaments, hosted and sponsored by PokerStars.com, has indeed grown exponentially since they started in October. The first tourney boasted a decent 190 […]
• 15 Dec 2007 - THE POKER ENCYCLOPAEDIA
  Looking for a last-minute Christmas present for that poker-player in your life? Look no further than The Poker Encyclopaedia, newly published by Portico at a mere £14 (or just £10.49 from amazon). Handsomely bound in green baize, believe it or not, this indispensable work contains all the info you could ever need to check out […]