Book Review – Life’s a Gamble.

I first met Roy Brindley in March 2006 in Vienna on a poker trip with 14 other Irish based players to the Spring poker festival at the Concord Casino.

I remember all 16 of us going out for a meal where some had arrived very late and as a result the kitchen closed before all of us had been served. Actually Roy was the only one who wasn’t served, and while the rest of us munched on juicy sirloin steaks (one hungry chap actually ordered two steaks for himself and didn’t think to share!) Roy was left with a measly baked potato. Hardly fitting sustenance for a travelling profession poker player of his stature.

Naturally he was given plenty of stick as digital cameras were pulled out of bags and coat pockets to get a snapshot of “Roy the Boy” and his baked potato looking slightly disgusted. I’d imagine at that moment he wanted to be anywhere else but there, starving and having a bunch of cheeky and inferior poker players taking the Mickey. Little did I know at the time, the dark places Roy had been to in his past and how big a part Vienna played on his arduous and extraordinary journey towards the spotlight.

“Life’s a Gamble” is written word for word by Roy himself and is a very honest and revealing account of his life from the beginning. In fact, to borrow a term I’ve grown fond of, the book is written with a level of “unbridled honesty” that is all too rarely found among the modern poker player. The book contains no poker strategy, in fact the first half of the book mentions little poker at all as Roy recounts his childhood and exposure to hardcore gambling from an early age, his love of grey-hounds and some harrowing experiences as a greyhound trainer both in the UK and America.

Roy hasn’t just been to the bottom of the barrel, he’s been buried underneath it. How many professional poker players do you know once lived in a cardboard box on the streets or in a dog kennel, and how many will tell you truthfully about their struggles with anger and depression or their run-ins with the law? He tells his story of hardship and degeneracy with enough humility that we can’t help but be drawn into his world and even though we already know the story has a happy ending, as we read on we feel his pain as he continually falls off the wagon. Roy becomes our hero and we desperately want him to reach his goals.

The development of his love for poker begins half way through the book as he tells of his first ever trip to a poker game at Dublin’s Jackpot Club, where he was stunned to find himself sitting in front of Noel Furlong, a former World Series of Poker main event winner. Here he plies his trade alongside some well known characters from the Dublin poker scene. His determination to win large sums of life changing money from the get-go is palpable and he recalls how he travelled around Europe searching for big wins, including his now infamous drunken victory at the Tony G invitational. He describes poker as his redemption. “It’s been like a dock leaf around a stinging wound; an improbable cure that has done the job admirably”.

By his own admission, his determination to succeed at times drove him mad. He describes how he once almost threw €34,000 out his hotel room window because he was disgusted at coming second at the 2002 World Heads up Poker Championship in Vienna, despite the fact that after registering for the event he couldn’t even afford a taxi back to the airport.

The book is not without its flaws. Roy mentions how desperately he wanted to win the Poker Masters in 2007 because he considered a couple of $50,000 cashes in tournaments in the previous 12 months to be “small change” which if true, the first prize of $120,000 in that event could hardly be considered a much larger sum. He also recounts how Andrew Black outplayed Phil Ivey at the World Series in 2005 which he says took place with two tables remaining, but actually happened 3 tables out with 27 players left. (Brindley had 3% of Black that year).

This is purely nitpicking on my part however and it’s important for me to say that the book is a welcome diversion from a growing list of shallow and self-absorbed poker player biographies. Usually, when professional poker players start talking about themselves I tend to look for the nearest exit for fear they might start comparing themselves to Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali, such is the monstrosity of some of their egos.

Brindley may have his knockers and while he oozes self confidence one thing he certainly doesn’t have is an over-inflated ego which is very evident from this book. His story is an inspiration to people who have struggled and are struggling, poker players, gamblers and non-gamblers alike.

A compelling and entertaining read.