Poker Player Editor Lou Krieger stayed busy running between several different interests during the last years of the 1990s: His work as a management consultant for various political subdivisions such as cities and school districts; interesting up to certain point but by the mid-1990s it was beginning to leave him a little cold.
Playing poker whenever he found the time because the game had been part of his life since those childhood years when he peered over the shoulders of the adults in the Brooklyn home games sponsored by his family.
And last but far from least-thinking about the book he expected to write. He saw the book fiction, nonfiction or whatever-he wasn't sure-as a project that would represent a defining moment. He wanted that book.
Krieger was almost a decade away from stepping into his current post at the Poker Player helm, totally unaware of the changing times that would carry him in that direction, or do so much to the poker business. The poker boom was maybe half a decade away from exploding, but when it hit a lot of lives were abruptly reshaped ... Krieger's included.
"The thing is," he says now, "almost no one saw it coming."
The way it began for Krieger . . .
He wanted to be what he saw in his mind as a "real author," doing a real book that would be put out by one of the major companies. This was the thinking that drove him forward. Everything eventually fell into place.
The "Dummies brand," as he thinks of it, caught his attention "because it is like a franchise," a source of solid but non-intimidating information on a variety of subjects-everything from understanding wines to, well, in Krieger's case, playing poker.
"It's the only brand that sells books," he says. "If you're looking for information on a subject you know nothing about it and you see five books on the shelf dealing with this subject and one of then is a Dummies book, you're probably going to buy the Dummies book."
There are hundreds of titles in the Dummies lineup- everything from beekeeping to bond investing, "and it just keeps growing." But poker's inclusion in this line-up did not come easily.
Having set his sights on what he wanted to do, it took Krieger a while to get the deal he wanted.
Beginning in 1998, maybe 1997, he began writing query letters that did not get anything close to a satisfying response, but finally managed to get in front of the editor he had been trying to reach.
The company, or rather, the man at the top of the company had a problem, Krieger was told, the problem being that the publisher had no interest in a book on gambling.
He tried the argument that poker was not really gambling ... was, well, poker. The editor gave that a shrug and a sympathetic nod. Yeah, he understood that line of thinking, but the publisher was the publisher.
He was not ready to change his mind. Krieger said, okay and asked that they keep him in mind in the event things changed.
This back and forth stuff went on for a couple of years, until the day when the editor told Krieger, "I've got some good news and I got some bad news."
The good news: The Dummies people were finally ready for a poker book. The not so good news: They had 23 people who wanted a shot at writing it. The list had been pretty much knocked down to a couple of names, Krieger and Richard Harroch, a lawyer who had done some early legal work for the Dummies company.
"It's down to you and this other guy," Krieger was told.
The message Krieger thought he was getting went something like this: Write the book with Harroch or perhaps lose any chance of being connected with the project.
So Krieger said, "I have a good idea, why don't Harroch and I do the book together?"
Now there's an idea, he was told.
It took six or seven months to complete the project and when Krieger finally had a copy of Poker for Dummies in hand he could not have been happier. Finally, he told himself, a real book by a major publisher.
But very big things were still ahead. The year 2003 brought the Chris Moneymaker phenomenon.
The Nashville accountant with the big dreams and the made for prime time name parlayed a small internet buy-in into a seat in the World Series of Poker main event and a first-place finish.
The World Poker Tour also debuted the same year on television screens across the country and Krieger was suddenly hearing from publishers everywhere who wanted poker books . He recognized the opportunity staring him in the face. So he started writing. At this point he has about a dozen. "I had to strike while the iron was hot because I knew it was probably not going to be hot forever. All these books were a good thing, because the act of writing about poker really clarified my own thoughts about the game."
But probably few of his books will ever be bigger than Poker for Dummies which was described in one business story as being on its way to becoming the best-selling poker book of all time.
A true statement? "It's sold a lot of books,"
Krieger agrees without mentioning a specific number, "but you've got to credit the Dummies brand for that, not me. The people who buy it, the large majority, are beginning players and they do not know Lou Krieger from the man in the moon."
Krieger has a lot to say about the effects of the internet on poker. Among them is his belief that the same on-going process of evolution is found in all popular sports or games, as big thinkers contribute what they have to offer and the demand for further information is ratcheted up accordingly. New fans are attracted and the process repeats itself. He sees the public passion for football as a good example of this process at work.
And notes that publications such as Poker Player are powerful vehicles for driving the evolution forward. "That's one of the reasons I'm enjoying this job so much."
"Before the internet," he says, "poker had demographics that were much like those for horse racing. It was basically being played by middle-aged white males who were about 55 and older. There were no young people coming into the game. It just wasn't happening."
"Then poker migrated to the internet; now ... my goodness. Look at 18-yearold Annette Obrestad who won the World Series of Poker Europe's main event in London, outplaying many of the world's best know players. She isn't even old enough to walk into a casino in Las Vegas and already she's won a lot of money, nearly two million in London."
The sprawling world of big money cash games and tournaments is full of people much younger than middle age who are doing very well for themselves.
Krieger sees the many young players who are doing well on the internet as a natural consequence of being able to play a lot of hands in a relative short period of time.
"An on-line player can get the kind of experience in a matter of months that it might take a live-game player years to accumulate.
What did surprise me about Annette Obrestad was that she has consistently displayed the kind of judgment you do not normally associate with someone that young.
"I suppose the thing is, I was surprised but I was not surprised. I'm not surprised that she has the experience she does, because anyone can get that if they just sit down and play enough hands, but the judgment she displayed, that did surprise me."
It's a good time, Krieger says, to be working in the world of poker.
