Poker practice with the leader of the pack

No one knows if it's day or night, down in the brick bowels of The Loose Cannon poker club. No one cares, least of all Tony "Big Deal" Holden. Smoke curls from his lip. He steals another glance at his hand. "Still two nines," he says, to no one in particular. "Big Deal" is coffee-housing me, playing with my mind as much as with the cards.

Forgive the pulp fiction style. I can't help it, here at the gaming table with Anthony Holden, a former professional player, World Series contestant and "the top writer in pokerdom", according to Martin Amis. He wrote the poker classic Big Deal, and its riveting sequel, Bigger Deal. His next book is going to be - what else? - Holden on Hold'em. He was named for this game. You wouldn't think he'd bother bluffing a patsy like me, but he does it genially, compulsively.

"I check my cards. Have they perhaps shape-shifted into a pair of bullets? No, still two nines."

Loose play, Holden advises, is the way to go. "Tight players, called 'rocks', who sit there waiting for a good hand - they never make any money. Loose players, calling every hand, raising every hand - they're good players. Hard to read."

There is already a nine on the table. When another nine turns up on Fourth Street, hecks his cards again and coos "Quad nines!" He takes a glug of red wine. This is when I am meant to be looking for his tell, the involuntary mannerism that reveals what kind of hand he really has. "Are my eyeballs dilating? Am I jiggling my foot?" he asks. What is his tell? "That's the horrible thing. By definition, you don't know." But tells tell? "Sure.

When Chris Moneymaker carried off [pound]1.25m it was because his dad, sitting in the bleachers, noticed that his opponent was pushing his chips in with his left hand when he was bluffing, and with his right when he wasn't. People do the weirdest things. When Al Alvarez looks at his cards, and they're good, he eases his chair backwards a little. I used to make sure I sat on a bench alongside him, and when I felt it move, I'd fold. But 'cos he's a pal, I had to tell him. 'You bastard,' he said, 'How long had you known?' Only a few years." On the internet there is no such thing as a tell. "But you can glean some clues," says Holden. "If a player writes 'NH' - nice hand - it means you played your hand well. 'GH' - good hand, simply means you had good cards." But Holden prefers it face-to-face. "I like to look the players in the eye, smell their weaknesses. To ask, do you have a wife? How's it going?"

When Holden checks his cards he does it cautiously, like a schoolboy peering at a beetle in a tin. For all the late-night weltschmerz in his face, his relish for the game is fresh. "In a sense my life has been a surrogate poker game. In 1982, when I walked out on Rupert Murdoch, Harry Evans rang me up saying, "You think this is all a game, don't you?" An express train rumbles overhead, presaging doom for my hand. I lose confidence and fold like a deck chair. "Good fold," he says, consolingly. "As Amarillo Slim says, you can't play poker unless you can fold on the winning hand. And if we chase rabbits we see that I'd have rivered you anyway with that kicker." What does it all mean? I have no idea, but I could listen all night. Holden, of course, was holding nothing like quad nines. "But the bluff is everything," he says, raking in my chips. "Your deal."

'Bigger Deal' is out on Little Brown, priced [pound]17.99

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