People, Poker & Vegas is about a journey: a journey from a bookshop in the back streets of York to the neon of South Las Vegas Boulevard - the Strip. A 30 year journey from a small poker room in a Lancashire to the iconic casinos and poker rooms of Las Vegas.It narrates the author’s anecdotes and events during this journey and the eccentric characters who have joined him on his travels: the rich and the poor; the happy and the sad; friends he has made and the occasional curiosity that has crossed his path. It is not a book on how to master poker, nor is it a tourists guide to Las Vegas but a collection of ad hoc and sometimes amusing stories on the mystifying game of poker told from a personal point of view. A small stakes player who has ground it out in the poker rooms of Las Vegas.

All the people and events in the book are true, and on all occasions the author has tried to relate them to his own personal experiences of both poker and Las Vegas. If it brings the reader a better understanding of both of these two much misrepresented worlds and the people who inhabit them - then that is all the author asks.

Mike Connah currently works at the University of Central Lancashire as an Academic Support Tutor for students with Special Needs. Over the past ten years he has worked at the University as an Associate Lecturer in English Language Studies with International Students, and as an Examination Marker for the English Speaking Board . He has an BA(hons) in English Language and an MA in Linguistics.