Final Nine by Anish Patel Available Now

THM Staff, on July 28, 2023

After years of preparation and perfection, London-based poker player Anish Patel has released his comic, Final Nine. The book follows the journey toward winning poker’s world championship from the eyes of the final nine. You can purchase a copy through Amazon using the link at the bottom of the page. We asked Anish some questions about the release and his own journey along the way.

Who is Anish Patel?

Anish Patel is from London UK, a creative person, who has for many years worked in different industries as a professional and working on his own projects. In his spare time, he plays poker which he picked up in the early 2000s. Knowing he would not become a full-time player, Anish loved everything about Texas Hold’em and Las Vegas and wanted to do something that would get the poker community’s attention.

When did you have the idea of creating a poker comic book?

The idea of the poker comic book came in 2008, whilst watching the WSOP Main Event final table on TV, which Peter Eastgate won. I found it interesting to see how the TV coverage covered the poker, the event and also each player on the table. They gave the viewers chance to get to know them so the viewers can root for one of the players to win poker’s world championship. At that time, I was putting together some ideas for a short story and films, one of the ideas I had was to do with Poker but was not quite sure what the story would be.

The TV show on the WSOP Main Event final table gave me an idea to base a story about nine characters trying to win poker’s biggest tournament. As I put the idea together I wasn’t entirely sure what the format it would be in. This story was far too big for a Short film and putting it as a book novel may get boring for readers. Instead, I thought why not put it in comic book format, it was never done before especially around Texas Hold’em poker games. By having it in a comic book format, it would show the readers the real game, the emotions of the characters, as well as the glitz and glamor associated with Las Vegas in colourful pages.

How long did it take you to create the book?

It’s taken nearly 14 years to get to this stage, like everything, you want to start on the day and have it finished by tomorrow but getting the right people involved took months and finishing the first issue took a few years. Adding marketing, completing the full characters and structure details, finance and getting awareness adds on everything else. Because I was new in this industry I wanted to make sure I had done my research, at the beginning I had no money just the idea, but it gives me the chance to save up and see where I should be spending the money on the book. By 2011 I had the money saved up to hire an artist to do the illustrations but also by then I had 90% completions on the characters and structure. The first sample of the book was completed in 2011, it was shown to a number of people to get their feedback. With the same Illustrator, we ended up producing 4 issues which took the next few years but due to commitment from the Artist and finances, the project was on hold and difficult to progress with the book.

There was a point the whole project was ready to be dropped but I knew the story was good and I wanted to share this with comic book readers and the poker community. Once the finances were secure in 2017 I relaunched the project but this time I found a new team to work on the illustrations and for the next 4 years the illustrations were completed and the remaining format of the book like bonus materials and speech bubbles were the final stages which were completed by me.

What is the book about?

This is the story of nine players who compete in the largest Texas Hold’em tournament in Las Vegas, for the title of poker world champion.

“Final Nine” is the first poker comic book set in a high-stakes tournament world that is sometimes scary but always exciting. Out of nine people will be one, one way or another.

What is your favourite scene/drawing in the book?

Wow, that is a tough one, there are a lot of great art panels throughout the book, but if I had to pick one, in chapter five, there is a panel where the readers can see the whole table, one of the players made a ‘call’ of their hand and said a smart aleck comment that erupted the whole table, showing great reactions of each character in the art panel.