This week, there’s only one book we can cover, as the 2019 Global Poker Award handed out at the weekend for Written Media Content went to Martin Harris for his book of last year, Poker & Pop Culture.

The scope of Poker & Pop Culture is vast, covering the origins of poker from the game that originated in popularity in America on the riverboats on the Mississippi and developed in popularity across the Old West. The book captures the way poker fuelled the imagination of gamblers and gold panners everywhere as it grew and grew, turning into the game we all know and love today.

Covering 200 years of poker from the steamboats to the online poker scene that exploded post 2003 and The Moneymaker Effect, the book may have a rambling range of centuries of poker, but the writing is tight and the subjects all feel like important pins of the map of poker.

From the old days, poker was a social game and, as the book details, it is both fascinating and funny for its expansion into the global game it now exists as. From poker in the movies to games played during the war, the greatest card game on the planet has been through so many changes it is hardly the same game, yet the thread of poker is pulled tight and keeps it all hanging together with Harris the master of the narrative.