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Power Poker Dame is a high-voltage collection of adventures of a business-savvy, politically connected CEO,Wendeen Eolis,who happens to play No-Limit Texas Hold'em at the toughest tables on the planet. From legally prohibited underground card rooms to upscale glittering poker palaces, her stories unfold amid a grand mosaic of colorful, cunning, eccentric, adrenalin-hooked characters on a quest for cash, power, and perks. In the process she learns much about how to succeed in poker games that extend far beyond the felt.

Wendeen begins with six resolutions that roll off the tip of her tongue at her fortieth birthday bash: sell the penthouse, reorganize the business, change the oncologist, find an exciting new hobby, shed the common-law husband for good, and swear off dating "unavailable" men forever. The last part goes straight down the tubes when Wendeen strolls into a Manhattan gaming club and meets Suds, a one-time pool hustler-turned-millionaire businessman and poker pro. A year later she's sporting a five-carat diamond "no promises" ring at the 1986 World Series of Poker,where she becomes the first woman ever to finish "in the money" in the richest and most prestigious poker tournament on earth.

But poker remains just a moonlighting gig for her. By day she runs EOLIS, a legal consultancy, and serves as an advisor to the likes of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor George Pataki,coaching them on the finer nuances of bets and bluffs. She gains significant access and sporadic influence in their respective fledgling administrations as each attempts to shape his political destiny while neutralizing the power base of the other. All the while Wendeen puts in ten record-setting performances for a woman in major poker tournaments and world-class fields,and is always a factor in any pot she plays. Her late stepfather, a longtime politico who played poker from the time he was ten dubbed her the Power Poker Dame.

Though business recessions, fruitless romances, robberies, police raids, and the after-effects of chemotherapy periodically disrupt her climb, she continuously discovers powerful secrets about how to maximize opportunities and limit losses, thus making her a winner in myriad arenas that have historically been a man's domain. She also learns that victory can be at once glorious and costly, and that a partner's fidelity is a rich reward.

Power Poker Dame chronicles an ambitious woman's unusual path through the converging worlds of business, politics, and poker. Wendeen tells her story not merely through interviews and observations as a reporter but more personally as a longtime player,with a sometimes heart-wrenching, often humorous, and always thought-provoking look at the people who navigate through a wild variety of poker situations with varying degrees of grace. Along the way the reader will pick up practical tips to use at any negotiating table, poker or otherwise.

Populating her stories is an array of colorful main characters. "Suds," for example, is the world-class poker player and smooth Romeo who inspires Wendeen to play the game. "Stiltman" is a hardcore poker hustler. He is also an illegal card-room operator who turns his underground club into a megabucks business and a dangerous venue before and after he goes to jail. Adding context to these lives is a bold-faced supporting cast of more than one hundred well-known people,poker champions, business moguls, princes, presidents, mobsters, and movie stars among them. Here is a quick sampling of encounters in Power Poker Dame:

- Rudy Giuliani seeks her counsel on raising the stakes in the "ice cream truck"
- George Pataki re-raises pulling Wendeen into his administration
- Wayne Newton takes bets on his libel case with Wendeen at Casa de Shenandoah
- Donald Trump calls Wendeen to his Mara Lago estate
- World Poker Tour CEO Lyle Berman's bluff takes Wendeen off the IPO bus
- AOL/Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons folds against her merger advice
- Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno holds the hot hand with Wendeen's mother
- James Woods tests the strength of Wendeen's positional bet
- Telly Savalas gets crippled by Wendeen's semi-bluff at the World Series of Poker
- Tobey Maguire grabs $100 from her and makes the same successful play , again
- Poker legend Doyle Brunson schools Wendeen in the ABC's of No-Limit Hold'em
- WSOP wonder Chris Moneymaker flirts with her aces and gets crushed

A pioneer for women in business, politics and poker rooms, Wendeen is one of the most experienced female high-stakes No-Limit specialists in both cash games and tournaments). She still looks to poker as "just a hobby" but notoriously continues to beat up on more than a few of the top rated pros in major competitions. At the end of the day, Wendeen hints at her special expertise, insisting that mastery of people reading skills is the underpinning of a power poker dame.