BOOK REVIEW: I expected to enjoy Beneath the Cards: A High Stakes, High Anxiety Poker Journey after talking to Garrett Adelstein @GmanPoker about his process. He clearly took the craft seriously. And still my expectations were surpassed. I loved the pace, writing style and the introspection he put into what makes a great poker player. He takes us from a sometimes fraught childhood to cutting class to play online Sit-and-Gos to the biggest cash games in Los Angeles, with literal millions on the table. The stories of the backroom private games he played in were cinematic, and reminders that to make it big in a game like poker, you need to take risks on the felt, and also beyond it. For example, Garrett would often loan money to whales to keep the game going, knowing he might not get it all back. He also hired personal security for numerous underground games. Garrett is unflinching when he describes how well things broke for him, from friendships to card runouts to VIP players whose paths he crossed at just the right time. Chance also plays a starring role in the sliding doors moment when he met his future wife. The idea that success is when luck meets opportunity isn’t just a theme of the book, it vibrates throughout it. I was also moved by Garrett’s honesty when he discussed body dysmorphia and depression. Via extreme weight fluctuations and obsessive workout schedules, food and fitness became a source of anxiety in his life. He crashed particularly hard after his short-lived run on Survivor, where he was the second player eliminated, with his immunity idol back at camp. I’d always wondered how miserable it must be to be eliminated on a reality TV show and then quarantined for weeks while the others play for glory and the million. Indeed, Garrett was left to stew over all his strategic errors. “Unable to get online or leave the property, I spent my days eating everything in sight, my appetite insatiable after six days of starvation.” Beyond the importance of bringing your idol to Tribal Council, the book gave me some practical takeaways. 1. Teach your child multiplication tables via games. We learn early on about Garrett’s wizardry in a math card game, when he was eight. “I’d orbit the classroom multiple times, never losing a round.” When his teacher asked him to sit out, Garrett replied, “If they wanna beat me, they should practice at home.” The day after reading this section, I broke out my deck of Krypto Cards for my son’s back to school week. This is a game my brother and I used to play in elementary school, and much like Garrett, I remember feeling invincible in my grade...because I worked at it. Multiplication is our first introduction to the magic of compounding. Don’t let them skip it! 2. Work on Your Mental Health Like It’s Your Job: Garrett gives a very in-depth chronicle of his struggles with depression, mood swings and eating disorders. He also tells us about a string of therapists he tried before he found the Therapist of His Life, Tamar, a central figure in the second half of the book. This persistence struck me as similar to a winning approach to poker. It can be daunting for anyone--especially when suffering from depression-- to call one therapist, let alone try again when the first or second don’t click. I hope Garrett’s account will inspire others to keep going. 3. Don’t Quit When You’re Ahead: Garrett doesn’t quit when he’s ahead. If the game is good, he keeps playing, even if it means staying up well past dawn. He compares the importance of riding a poker wave to Hollywood careers that roar then fizzle unexpectedly. By contrast, some of his fellow pros lock up a win too early, which allowed Garrett to scoop up a lot of the best games. When opportunity and luck collide, grab it and don’t let go. You never know when your time in the sun is going to end. Jack Four The chapters on jack-four offsuit, the most talked about hand in poker history, were extremely detailed. Intrigued, I skipped to these chapters, then went back and started at the beginning. Still, it was a wise choice to place that section deep inside the book, so readers newer to poker drama will be invested in his character and arc before getting into the controversy. For readers who don’t follow poker, the jack-four incident, on September 29, 2022, was poker’s version of the Magnus Carlsen vs. Hans Niemann scandal. Controversy and cheating allegations consumed the poker world after a bizarre live-streamed hand featuring Garrett and Robbi Jade Lew, who has always denied cheating. It even happened the same month as the Carlsen-Niemann game on September 4, 2022. Garrett’s retelling includes some new details and investigative work. But the most gripping parts are his reflections on how the episode changed his life and perspective. As someone who lost a lot from telling the truth in a difficult situation, Garrett’s musings resonated with me. Life, like poker, isn’t fair. And sometimes there are no “winning” solutions. There’s just a move that loses less than the others. Poker players often use the phrase, “At least I lost the minimum.” But how many of us can say that when we encounter a real-life quandary, not just a four-flush raining on our set? Garrett criticizes several of his choices, like his middle-of-the-night tweet after the jack-four hand. He thinks he should have hired a PR firm. Sure. Maybe. But judging from some of the PR statements written for celebrities, it’s hard to imagine a worked-over, red-lined press release satisfying the poker world. We read authenticity for a living. It was this epiphany that struck me: “after a lifetime of running good, I can finally see that fateful day for what it was: I got really fucking unlucky.”