Martin Oakes is a professional poker player--cool, mysterious, ever appraising the hand life deals him. Martin Oakes never loses. He lives with his adored wife, Jennifer, outside Boston, where he has begun to develop a sideline that will shortly become central: he teaches problem kids how to play poker. These distraught, surprising adolescents figure they can turn poker to their own advantage; their parents hope the kids will get some sense drummed into them; and for Martin Oakes the poker classes become both a necessary escape and a fount of strength. As the story moves inexorably from one showdown to the next, as Martin Oakes delivers to his unlikely pupils his lessons in courage, guile and wit, as he himself learns more than he had thought possible about winning and losing, the reader is gently but completely taken over, royally entertained, and charmingly instructed.