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West End Poker

Looking for a spot of high culture but can't bear to turn your back on the cards? Dave Woods has the answer...

I was lucky enough to get tickets for the official West End opening of Dealer's Choice, Patrick Marber's poker play, last night. It's currently enjoying a well deserved revival in the capital, and, if you haven't seen it, book your tickets now. It provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to combine your first love (poker), with your second (your partner, if you have one), meaning that for once, everyone's a winner.

The paparazzi were out in force as well, and it was all a bit surreal to start off with. From the celebs in the lobby (from Derren Brown to John Humphries, through Ram Vaswani and Bev and Norm Pace) I took my seat to be greeted by Anthony Holden, overlooking Ross Boatman on stage peeling potatoes. And no, this wasn't a dream, although if it was I'm sure there'd be several psychologists ready to explain what it all means...

The play is funny, effortless to watch, and brilliantly crafted, but get this - Dealer's Choice doesn't portray poker in a particularly great light. If you haven't played poker before, you'll never want to play it after watching this. Full of arguments, back-biting and enough uses of the 'c' word to make Shakespeare blush, the play actually uses the poker game to sift through the six characters, exposing their weaknesses and (lack of) emotional ties. It pulls back the curtain and shows the game for what it is - you against the world, be that friend, foe or relative. The only time you get any sense of humanity is when a winning hand is deliberately mucked - a device that has since been used in the dour Curtis Hansen flick Lucky You. What's missing is the sense of camaraderie that lifts the home game above the kill or be killed mentality.

And, funnily enough, the same criticism that's levelled against pretty much every poker flick, can be used on Dealer's Choice - the poker action itself is a bit iffy. Grub Smith has written a column in the next issue of PokerPlayer detailing the two glaring mistakes and true to his word, they stuck out like a sore thumb last night. I might have been pre-warned but I still think any half-decent poker player would notice them. The weird thing is, it's penned by Patrick Marber, himself a keen player, and stars Ross Boatman. It would only take a couple of tweaks to the script to bring it back on the level and why no-one pointed this out is a mystery.

You still have to see it. Watching a play about poker in the West End is a treat that's not going to come around very often. And, as an incentive, the first person to email me the two poker mistakes before our magazine goes out to subscribers (which should be next Tuesday), gets a chipset.

The new issue of PokerPlayer - featuring Daniel Negreanu on the future of poker - is on sale December 20. You can email Dave Woods at dave_woods@dennis.co.uk

• Poker