Some poker books feature elite strategy designed to transform your game from a losing one to one where you’re a paragon of profit. Other poker books are stories, narrative-led tales of derring-do where the main protagonist is shooting for the proverbial poker moon.

This week’s book, the amusingly-entitled Vegas or Bust could be said to offer both a strategic and life lesson in the same story, all wrapped up in the kind of plot that Hollywood movies might be knocking on the door to replicate.

The story, while expansive and thrilling, is also very simple. Johnny Kampis is the man who played in the Main Event in 2006 and busted with pocket kings against pocket aces. That is, in isolation, no strange thing. There must be thousands of people who have that self-same story of how their luck ran out in Las Vegas in the biggest poker event each year.

Three years after Moneymaker won the Main Event, it was Jamie Gold who won the biggest first prize the Main ever offered – an eye-watering $12 million. But while the confetti fell around Gold’s ears, Kampis was walking away from the World Series and Las Vegas.