"Texas Holdem Poker: Bets, Bluffs and Bad Beats" is a great gift for your favorite Texas Holdem poker player and a good read even if you don't gamble.

The author is A. Alvarez, an avid Texas Holdem poker player and gifted writer who is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker magazine and a published poet. The book is filled with funny stories, wise advice and plenty of pictures - more than 100 photographs, movie stills and other illustrations.

Alvarez compares poker players to mental athletes.

"They just don't look the part," he writes. "That haggard young man behind a mountain of chips, his face shrouded by dark glasses and the pulled-down brim of his cap, can calculate in his head, to two decimal places, the odds on any proposition. The jovial Texan says, 'Howdy, pardner' when you sit down, then frightens the life out of you with a brutal check raise. The disdainful Asian with a duck's-ass haircut curling over the collar of his leather jacket and a pretty Hispanic girlfriend sitting patiently at his elbow comes out betting like Genghis Khan whenever he senses weakness. All of them are world-class players, but no one would ever guess it from their appearance."

Chapters in the book focus on the game's origins, bluffing and the World Series of Poker. Alvarez often writes in first person about his poker experiences. A book that he read helped turn his fortunes around.

"So I got hold of the class introduction, Herbert O. Yardley's 'The Education of a Texas Holdem Poker Player,' and read it through twice - first incredulous that anyone could play so conservatively, then ashamed of my own naivete,'

" Alvarez writes. "Then I went back to the game and tried to apply what I had learned. For two years after that, I played by the book - that is, by Yardley, whom I solemnly reread cover-to-cover each Friday afternoon before I went to the game. And for two years, with a couple of minor hiccups, I didn't lose."

That changed when Alvarez began playing Texas Holdem with more skilled players who were also familiar with Yardley.