Poker Ping!
Posted on 09/15/2005 12:11:21 PM PDT by frogjerk
Poker's upsurge in popularity has been a jackpot for the publishing industry. New York City-based Cardoza Publishing is reporting a tenfold increase in sales for its poker-related titles and USA Today estimates that 60 poker books will make print this year.
Locally, one publisher has found itself ahead of the curve, another is trying to catch up and a third is sitting out the poker craze altogether.
According to Huntington Press Publisher Anthony Curtis, the national leader in poker publishing is not Cardoza but Henderson-based Two Plus Two Publishing, run by Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky.
Gambler's Bookstore owner, Howard Schwartz, reads one of the many new books on poker. He says his store now has 250 separate titles on the card game, double the number in stock a year or two ago.
Between them, the pair have written 26 of Two Plus Two's 43 poker titles. "They're pretty much it if you're going for the top poker books," Curtis said of Sklansky and Malmuth's operation.
Malmuth and Sklansky published their first Two Plus Two title in 1987, after 11 years of placing their books with other publishers, starting with Sklansky's Hold 'Em Poker in 1976. Two Plus Two's Harrington on Hold 'Em, written by 1995 World Series of Poker winner Dan Harrington, ranked 54th in sales at Amazon.com, while its sequel -- published this June -- was close behind at 61.
"There's now an avalanche of poker books coming out," Malmuth said, but he's not worried. "We have a reputation for putting out the very best books and we have no competitors in that respect. We're not putting out trivial books. These are like textbooks," the publisher said.
The rising tide of poker tomes has lifted Two Plus Two's business as well. In 2002, prior to the poker boom, Malmuth sold 45,000 books, most of which retailed for $30 apiece. "We think we'll hit 500,000 books this year."
While Two Plus Two moved into new offices in April, to accommodate additional inventory, the demand for titles has been so heavy that the company has gone back to renting its old storage space in North Las Vegas to handle the overflow.
The growth has been more evident to Malmuth and Sklansky on the TwoPlusTwo.com Web site, especially in its discussion forums.
"At any one time, there's usually 500 to a thousand people" online, half of them collegiate, according to Malmuth, generating 10,000 posts per day. "We're a huge driver of sales for any poker book that is good."
That would redound to the benefit of local emporiums like Gambler's Book Shop, 630 S. 11th St., a mile south of downtown Las Vegas. Owner Howard Schwartz has seen the poker craze literally reshape his store, which had to be redesigned to encompass a poker section that ballooned to 250 titles, with 20 more expected, not counting the various instructional DVDs that Schwartz sells.
"We almost doubled the amount of poker books we had in the past year and a half," Schwartz said. "Everybody's writing a poker book. What people want to know is how to get the money, how to save money and how to shaft somebody along the way.
"It's probably outstripped sports betting as the most popular area," added Schwartz, who has seen poker-themed books rise to 25 percent of his book sales while horseracing titles have slipped to 5 percent. He believes that many blackjack skill players have been hounded by the casinos and have retrained their sights on poker.
Malmuth attributes the poker mania to a cadre of regular players weaned on his and Sklansky's books, augmented by college students playing the game on the Internet.
The tipping point, he estimates, was the introduction of the "rail cam" in 2003, a miniaturized camera that gave viewers of televised poker tournaments a player's-eye view of the hole cards.
In addition to burgeoning TV coverage of the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour, the networks cashed in on Hollywood's fascination with the game with programs like Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown.
Filmed at the Palms Casino Resort, the series already has its entire 2005-6 and 2006-7 seasons in the can and has made a household name of analyst and championship player Phil Gordon.
By Anthony Curtis' own admission, Huntington Press missed the boat and is racing to catch up with its next title, Kill Phil.
"We needed a monster vehicle," to separate from the pack of poker books, Curtis explained. "It's more than a speedboat. It's some kind of hydroplane."
Unlike the expert-targeted Two Plus Two books, Kill Phil is a how-to book for beginners, aimed at those TV viewers who want to try and realize their Walter Mitty fantasies of sitting in with the big boys.
The title of Kill Phil is a play on the plethora of Phils (Gordon, Ivey, Laak, Hellmuth) who dominate the professional-poker circuit. Phil Hellmuth, nicknamed "Hellmouth" for his temper, is featured on the cover and contributed a foreword. He also gave a thumbs-up to the strategies outlined by authors Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson. "Phil doesn't do anything that isn't going to further Phil," Curtis explained.
Although Huntington is a publishing house built on a foundation of how-to books for gamblers, poker hasn't been a cornerstone of that success. Curtis says he avoided the topic due to a dearth of in-house poker expertise.
"Poker is so complicated that you've got to have a real firm understanding of the game to write about it well, edit it well, publish it well." Also, until recently, "the market wasn't that big. (Malmuth and Sklansky) stayed the course, poker became huge and they reaped the rightful reward," he said.
Meanwhile, Stephens Press, owned by Stephens Media, parent company of the Business Press, continues to watch from the sidelines the publishing mania for poker.
According to company President Carolyn Hayes Uber, Stephens Press is seeking to carve a niche for itself without releasing any gambling-related titles under its imprint.
"When we started there was one other publisher of any size, in terms of gaming, and gambling," she explained, with reference to Huntington. "If Anthony came out with a fabulous new book on poker we would be delighted to sell it. Unless a book was presented to us that was phenomenal, we would leave that to them."
Uber is careful to distinguish between putting the Stephens label on gambling books and distributing gaming-related books from other publishers, which the company is happy to do.
"The one that simply amazed me was when we started selling the Huntington Press book on video poker by Bob Dancer," Uber recalled of Million Dollar Video Poker. "It sold extremely well."
Despite rumors that the Hollywood crowd is ready to move on from poker in search of the next fad, none of the gentlemen who make their trade selling gambling books in Las Vegas is worried about a receding tide.
"We're going through a phase in history where the only thing that can stop poker from being the most popular form of gambling (slots excepted) is a big scandal," said Schwartz.
"Regardless of what happens, it will still remain big," Curtis rejoined. "Poker will be a cool thing to do for quite some time. Will it continue its meteoric ascent? It can't. It's too expensive. Nobody wants to get their brains and their wallet beat out every time they sit down."
"We've been fairly steady over all the years," added Malmuth, whose poker-based publishing house well predates the current craze for Texas Hold 'Em and games of that ilk. "Obviously there will come a day when it peaks. There's probably too many tournaments right now" and new ones continue to be announced.
Malmuth thinks the fever for poker will subside yet the sport will still maintain a higher temperature than it did a few years ago. He points to the generation coming of age, and into the workplace, picking up the green-felt virus in college. "They're not interested in drugs anymore," Malmuth observed, "but they want to play poker."
Poker Ping!
cool, anyone have any suggestions for the top books?
What are you interested in? Which variation of poker?
Whats the old saying, ....."there`s a sucker born every minute".
The problem is, nobody ever thinks they`re the sucker.
Kind of like "If you are looking around at the table for the fish and can't find him, your probably the fish..."
I've moved all in with some crazy stuff before. Part of the game. Thats why its called gambling. I still remember the look of "I am going to kill you" when I called an all in bet outta the big blind with 2-7 off after everyone else folded to the guy. It was only 3 times the big blind to do so, I was heads up, and I had a big stack so I gambled. Hit a boat on the river. He was pissed.
I love poker and play as much as I can.
Oh, and put me on the ping list.
I enjoyed Phil Hellmuth's "Play Poker Like The Pros" for general strategy, though I wish he spent more time discussing tournament strategy, as that's the way I play a majority of the time.
I also own Hellmuth's "Lucky Draws and Bad Beats" which is a fun non-strategy, liight reading book about famous hands in poker history.
Done!
Super System is great. Another great one is Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play. These are probably not good for beginners though.
Harrington's books are excellent.
When it comes to poker books, Slansky's holding the nuts.
Johnny-come-latelys are chasing to the river with dead hands.
A great book!
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