Lou Krieger Passes Away

The poker world lost a great friend Monday. Lou Krieger, renowned poker author and ambassador, passed away after a long battle with cancer.

His family posted a brief message on his Facebook page:

It is my deepest regret to inform you that early this morning Lou’s fight against cancer ended. He fought courageously to the end with the same pride and dignity that carried him through his life. He wanted everyone to know that he did not go peacefully in his sleep but fighting like hell. He was surrounded by his family. We know he would want everyone to keep floppin’ aces. He will be missed by all that knew him. Poker has lost a star.

Lou Krieger authored 11 poker books, most notably Hold’em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner (1995), Poker for Dummies (2000), and The Poker Player’s Bible (2004). From 2007 up until spring of this year, he served as Editor of the Poker Player Newspaper, one of the few remaining print publications devoted to poker. In addition, he hosted the podcast “Keep Flopping Aces” with Shari Geller.

More than what he did, though, Lou will be remembered as one of the friendliest, most welcoming people the poker community has ever seen. Whether you were a seasoned pro or a total newcomer to the game, he didn’t care. Your interest in poker meant you automatically had a bond with him. In fact, he might have preferred talking poker with novices; after all, teaching poker is what he did so well.

On a personal note, when I was new to both the industry and the game of poker itself back in 2005, I had the good fortune to be able to interview Lou for Poker News Daily, during the days when this site was in its infancy. He didn’t know me from Adam and almost certainly didn’t know anything about our little website, but you wouldn’t have known it to hear him.

I had asked for 15 minutes of his time. He gave me an hour.

Some interviewees would answer questions with a word or two. Lou responded to my questions with stories. I gave him a chance to end the conversation a couple times – after all, who was I to take up so much of his time – but he didn’t care. It felt like I was talking to a friend. And at the end of our conversation, he thanked me. Lou thanked me.

I never posted that interview on the website. I had recorded it on an old-school telephone answering machine using a micro-cassette and as I was transcribing it, the tape broke. I didn’t want to post a partial interview, so it just got filed away in my archives. I found what I did transcribe, though, so I thought I’d share a few portions of it.

About his love of poker:

You know, I’ve never earned my sole income out of player poker. It’s always been part of my life. I learned how to play when I was eight years old. I just was always captivated by the game and I’m still captivated by the game. I think, like everybody else I know in poker, I’m a pretty competitive person. You get to an age where you can’t compete real well in sports anymore and poker gives you all of that…poker gives you more. It gives you the conflict and competition, and it also gives you friendships and acquaintances.  

When you deal with people in poker, you’re dealing with them in a very real way because their emotions are kind of raw and open and exposed for all the world to see at the poker table. It’s not the social game that doesn’t give much away that happens when you meet people in any other context – social or business, you’re pretty guarded. But, in poker you see somebody, warts and all. Actually, I’ve thought about this and I thought, why are the friends that you make and keep from childhood always your best friends, your lifelong friends, you know, guys you’ve known since the fourth grade. I think when you’re a kid, you’re completely ingenuous, you know, you don’t hide anything, so your friends know all of you – the good, the bad, the ugly – and they accept you for it and they care about you for it. As an adult, you don’t give away that much about yourself in other walks of life. But in poker, people get to see who you are. I remember reading a debate that poker builds character and I always thought that it probably doesn’t build character, but reveals it.

About why so many poker players teach others when we’re all trying to win money from each other:

People post on the internet all the time that poker writers don’t put their true thoughts or their best thoughts in books because they don’t want to give away their secrets. On the other hand, a lot of poker isn’t in what you learn, it’s in how deeply you learn it. So, I could say to somebody…it’s really important that you learn to read other players to put them on hands, you know, here’s some things to look for. It’s going to be quite a while before somebody can look for those things and do a good job of it. Picking up tells, I mean, some people are much better at it than others, and yet, everybody knows to do it and knows the sort of things to look for, yet some people just execute it better than others.  

And I think it’s not…learning poker isn’t like learning math. I mean, in math, you have to do arithmetic before you can do algebra and you have to do algebra before you do differential equations.  You have these building blocks of sophisticated knowledge. But in poker you have the mechanics and the rudiments and then it’s just a matter continuing to pick up and dig deeper.

We talked about much more, such as how the Poker for Dummies book came to be, his writing influences and how he got involved as a spokesman for the online poker room Royal Vegas Poker. Perhaps I’ll try to mend the tape and get the entire interview up online one of these days. It would be nice to hear Lou’s voice again.

Looking back, my interview with Lou Krieger was one of the reasons I’ve stayed in the poker industry for almost eight years now. I was green at the time, just trying to get my bearings in this strange, new world. And then there was this guy, Lou, who put his arm around me and showed me how bright this world could be.

Thank you, Lou. You were a scholar and a gentleman.