I recently finished Vicky Coren's book which was a very good read. It's an auto-biography within a poker framework and is very honest and funny. She talks about the 'old' days of poker before it was popularised by television where you had the dingy unlicensed clubs to now where you have poker celebrities and multi million dollar contracts for players. She's an interesting character in poker because you wouldn't think her background and education would lend itself to her becoming so heavily invested in such a game. She certainly makes the game more respectable to people like my parents, being a Guardian columnist and all, so I'm grateful to her for that. On the negative side I found some of her hand analyses rather tilting and she generally seems to look badly upon the internet generation of players that came into poker post-Moneymaker. This includes making comments along the lines of, "these scandis, drinking their water, moving all-in with ace king which isn't even a pair, when will they learn?". Sigh...
I've watched most of the movies I put down in a previous blog. Here's some mini reviews:
- Toy Story 3 - Fantastic animation as usual and a very good story. Some gut-wrenching scenes at the end too which will make the most cold-hearted person well up. 8/10
- Disappearance of Alice Creed - Great performances (only three people in the film) and very engaging. Got a bit silly as the story developed though. 7/10
- Greenberg - Very original style of film and interesting role for Ben Stiller. Maybe it tries to hard to be different though and there's actually not really a plot. Not fully decided on this one yet but for now...6/10
- Winter's Bone - Boooooooring. Maybe it's just one of those films I don't 'get'. 3/10.
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