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Home at last. After seven-and-a-half weeks away watching other people play poker, I have finally returned to my home on the east coast of the United States. Most of that period was spent in the Nevada desert, where the temperatures outside were exceeding 110°F (43°C) by the time I left last weekend. Of course, for the most part I was inside the sometimes frigid Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, helping cover the 41st Annual World Series of Poker for PokerNews.

I’ve come home with a lot of memories from the 2010 WSOP. One of them is pictured above — the moment the cash bubble burst in the Main Event, when the Amazon room was filled with raucous shouting and cheers. That moment is always one of the most exciting of the summer.

I thought it would fun as a kind of WSOP postscript to share ten memories from my summer in Vegas — all specific moments which kind of stand out as I think back on the experience of helping report on the Series.

1. The first event I helped cover was Event No. 3, the first of six open-field $1,000 no-limit hold’em events. The field for that first one ended up being the largest in the entire WSOP save the Main Event — 4,345 runners in all. The witty Danafish was my blogging partner for those first couple of days, and I remember asking her at some point early on for an estimate on how many players had shown up. Her deadpanned reply came without hesitation: “One million.”

2. Event No. 17, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event, attracted a star-studded field, including one table featuring Brandon Adams, Shannon Elizabeth, Dan Heimiller, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, and David Williams. I happened to be watching the table when a big hand developed that involved Heimiller, Hellmuth, Ferguson, and Williams. During the hand, Elizabeth snapped a photo of her tablemates and sent it out on Twitter. I noticed later I was in the picture, and joked with my colleagues that the American Pie star was taking pictures of me reporting.

3. Event No. 19, the $10,000 Deuce-to-Seven Draw Championship (No-Limit), also attracted quite a few well-known pros. On Day 1, I watched a funny hand between Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and Andy Bloch. Ferguson opened with a raise from the cutoff seat, and only Bloch called from the big blind. Bloch then drew two cards, while Ferguson stood pat. Bloch then bet, at which point Ferguson folded his hand face up — quad fours! Ferguson and Bloch — well known for their mathematical minds — shared a good laugh at the sight of Ferguson’s statistically improbable hand.

4. I helped cover Event No. 22, the $1,000 buy-in Ladies Hold’em Championship, although I didn’t join the coverage until Day 2. That meant I’d missed a lot of the brouhaha that happened on the first day when about a dozen men entered the event. Before the final table, WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla (whom I interviewed here a couple of weeks ago), said a few words about the history of the Ladies Event at the WSOP, adding that “The WSOP will always support the ladies poker championship. The ladies deserve their day.” His declaration was met with applause, and while the Ladies event will surely continue to draw controversy, I thought it significant that Dalla made the statement he did.

5. Day 3 of Event No. 35, the $10,000 Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship, was supposed to be the last day of the event. The final round — which was best two out of three — didn’t start until around 11 p.m., and the first match between Ayaz Mahmood and Ernst Schmejkal was still going more than six hours after it had begun. By that point the sun had risen, and the players and tourney officials were debating whether to continue with the second match right after or come back later in the day. My blogging partner Tim and I were exhausted — we’d been at it for something like 16 hours. Schmejkal was ready to go ahead and reschedule the second match, but Mahmood wanted assurance that it wouldn’t start until 7 p.m. “If we can’t do seven, I want to play now,” said Mahmood. Tim and I looked at each other in horror. Thankfully seven did work, and our long day-slash-night-slash-day finally concluded shortly thereafter.

6. I reported on Event No. 39, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout, in which Annette Obrestad won her first two tables and thus made it to the final day. I was intrigued to watch Obrestad play, having only seen her on television before this summer — indeed, I’ll admit to have been a little starstruck when watching that first hand or two of hers, something I haven’t experienced at the WSOP in a long time.

7. I had the chance to cover Event No. 44, the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em event in which Gavin Smith won his first WSOP bracelet. Smith cut an interesting figure at that final table, wearing a sport jacket, a fedora, and eyeglasses. There was a seriousness about him that seemed a bit different from the usual happy-go-lucky persona we have seen in the past from “the Caveman.” I remember at one point Smith won a hand and his friend Layne Flack shouted “Winning never gets old, does it?” from the stands. Smith had a reply: “Yeah, but sometimes it gets hard to remember.” He smiled a moment more, but then was back to business. It was clear he wasn’t going to indulge in a lot of extracurricular activity on that day, and I suppose one has to conclude his focus served him well.

8. I helped cover Event No. 54, the last those $1,000 no-limit hold’em events, at which there occurred something quite unique. As is usually the case, late registrants were seated together at newly-opened tables, and at one of the tables were sat no less than five players with WSOP bracelets. Not only that, they had a whopping 16 bracelets between them — Layne Flack (six), Chris Ferguson (five), Tom Schneider (two), Ryan Hughes (two), and Gavin Smith (one). “What are the odds of this at a $1K event?” asked Schneider.

9. On Day 1d of Event No. 57, the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship (a.k.a., the Main Event), I was there helping report on the action when a fellow leaned over the rail and began asking me questions about the prize pool, the average stack size, and so forth. He wanted to know what sort of stack would guarantee a person reaching the money. His questions became more and more specific; for example, he wanted me to assess what sort of shape a player would be in if he had ended Day 1 with 94,000 chips. Then I finally realized — he had played Day 1a, and was asking about his own situation! Then came the funniest part of our conversation. “Do you think I should play tight?” he asked. While I tried to answer all of his other questions as well as I could, I didn’t presume to advise him on that one.

10. One last story from Event No. 57 (the Main Event), an especially strange hand from Day 2a involving Chris Moneymaker and Bryan Pellegrino. While all of the other players had already left for dinner break, Moneymaker and Pellgrino had reached the river on a hand in which Pellegrino was sitting motionless while the 2003 Main Event champ stood and wandered about, appearing as though he were waiting for Pellegrino to decide how to respond to Moneymaker’s river bet. Finally, after more than ten minutes, Moneymaker said somewhat reluctantly that he was going to have to call the clock. That’s when Pellegrino explained that he had already reraised all in, and was waiting for Moneymaker to act! A pretty strange scene. Moneymaker would eventually bust shy of the cash, but Pellegrino made a deep run, finishing 143rd.

Of course, there were more moments along the way that stand out, including several from the Main Event. And there will be still more come November when the final table resumes. Such is the case every summer at the World Series of Poker!

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Lou Krieger is one of the most prolific and well-regarded poker authors around, having written or co-written 11 different books on poker and gambling as well as numerous columns for various publications over the last two decades. Krieger is also the editor of Poker Player Newspaper and hosts a weekly podcast called “Keep Flopping Aces.”

Given his authorship of so many poker titles and his familiarity with the publishing industry, I thought Krieger would be an interesting person to talk to about the current status of poker books and how that status may have changed over the years. We ended up discussing a number of topics when I appeared on his podcast recently, but I’d like to share with you some excerpts from the part of our discussion that specifically dealt with poker books and publishing.

I began my questions of Krieger with one about an ad for an online poker site I recently saw that had something to say about poker books.

Short-Stacked Shamus: In the latest issue of Bluff Magazine one finds an ad for Full Tilt Poker. On the left-hand side of the ad there is a stack of books with the following written over them: “Books can tell you about the strategies, the common scenarios, the mathematics, odds and proven methods, and all the ways you are supposed to play the game.” Then over on the right one sees a photo of Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, next to whom is written “But books don’t play poker.”

As someone who has written a lot of poker strategy books and has thought a lot about the purposes they serve, how do you respond to the ideas present in an ad like that?

Lou Krieger: First of all, I think it’s a good ad, because it’s compelling.

SSS: Yes, it is.

LK: Secondly, I think where it sort of leads you astray is that yes, you know, [the ad is right to say that] books can tell you things but they don’t play poker… they certainly don’t play poker at the level of Chris Ferguson. Anybody who thinks that his book will make somebody a poker player of the ability of Chris Ferguson is absolutely mad. It will not.

For me, I consciously said to myself when I sat down to write my books, “Who am I writing for? What’s the audience?” I have always written pretty much for the beginning and moderate poker player because that audience is infinitely larger than a book I could write that will be helpful to somebody at Ferguson’s level.

SSS: I guess in terms of achieving the widest possible audience, too, you might write a very useful and interesting book to the more experienced player, but you’re destined to sell fewer copies of a book like that.

LK: Yes, absolutely. And that’s the truth of almost any how-to book that you can imagine. All of the books on how to improve your golf or how to play tennis, they’re not aimed at the pros. They are aimed at the players of limited ability like the vast majority of us are who are going to go out and buy those books.

SSS: You’ve written 11 books. The first one was Hold’em Excellence, yes?

LK: Right. That was written in 1995, I believe. Way before the poker boom started… it was a totally different universe.

I wrote Hold’em Excellence and More Hold’em Excellence, which was the follow up to it. Then I had a proposal to do Poker for Dummies. I really wanted to do a “For Dummies” book because I thought that, you know, there’s a book that’s a brand, and if I do a “For Dummies” poker book it really legitimizes me in terms of being a good poker writer and in the marketplace, because it’s a big huge publisher and not a small self-published book.

[So I did] Poker for Dummies [with Richard D. Harroch], then the poker boom hit. It sounds like the dark ages, but it was less than a decade ago. Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker, and every publisher and his brother wanted a poker book written.

Since I already had books out and I’d written a “For Dummies” book I was a known quantity so they called me. I wound up writing about five or six books in four years. It was just nonstop writing, and I knew that I might as well do it now because this poker boom is going to be like hula hoops… it ain’t lasting forever. So as long as they’re sending me advances and asking me to write a book for them, I might as well say yes. And so I kept writing books. I think one year I had four books come out, which is just insane.

SSS: Tell me about your motives for writing poker books.

LK: I think the motivation for writing is twofold. Number one is I like to write. So I enjoy writing. And [number two,] the process of writing, of having to put words on paper, forces you to clarify your thoughts. You can’t be ambivalent. You can’t believe it’s one way on Tuesday and another way on Wednesday. You have to take a position about something. You have to offer advice that’s clear, concise, works, and holds up, so you have to think it through.

As a result, the act of writing, like the act of teaching… the person that often gets the most out of it is the writer or teacher himself. I’ve learned more from writing books than I could have gotten any other way I can think of.

SSS: So how has the poker publishing world changed from before the poker boom to after?

LK: [With those pre-boom titles] there was some [degree] of the market crying for [them]. Unfortunately that’s not the case anymore. The market for poker books is pretty swamped. And during that same time [i.e., the mid-90s to today] the publishing industry at large has been undergoing incredible changes, shrinking and collapsing, etc. So you have that happening.

SSS: How about the very recent past — the last year or two. It seems as if in the industry there is less buzz now about books. I’m really just speaking of the last year, maybe two years…. There is so much more to compete with books today. If you’re a poker player and you want information, you can go online, you can go to the forums, you can go to training sites or forums… there are a lot more exciting ways to get that information than from books.

LK: There’s also that phenomenon of how publishers are a lot more risk averse than they used to be. It used to be that 10-15 years ago they would take chances on a book if they liked it, if it was literate, if it had something going for it, whereas now they are looking for pretty much sure things…. More and more publishers are looking for “me too” kinds of books, whatever the subject matter is. And the general thinking in the publishing industry is that poker, at least for right now, has pretty much played out as an interesting topic for a book….

[You could say] the publishing industry is hunkering down. They are getting very conservative about what they release, and they’re unwilling to take risks. They are only playing aces and kings. Whereas in the past they would take a flyer on a nine-eight suited.

SSS: Yeah, that’s right.

LK: You know what’s a very interesting phenomenon… when we talk about poker books being played out, we’re really talking about hold’em books being overdone. Nobody’s writing about the other forms of poker. In fact, Mark Tenner, who came in second in last year’s WSOP Omaha/8 event, he and I wrote a book called Winning Omaha/8 Poker in 2003. And we are in the process now of doing a second edition, adding a substantial amount of new material.

But in the seven years since this book has come out there’s not been another book written about Omaha. There have been a gazillion books written about hold’em, and Omaha at one time was called the game of the future. Yes, there’s been one or two PLO books written…

SSS: Yes, Jeff Hwang has written a couple of PLO books that I like a lot. [Note: Hwang's first Omaha book, Pot-Limit Omaha Poker, does contain a section devoted to Omaha/8.] There probably is an Omaha/8 book [written since 2003] somewhere, but you guys are pretty much alone on the shelf there.

LK: Yeah, and so we’re going to come out with a second edition. The publisher says he’s getting interest from some people who want a new one, so we’ll see what happens. But when we talk about the poker book business we’re really talking about the no-limit Texas hold’em book business.

Much thanks to Lou Krieger for taking the time. If you are interested in hearing the full interview — as well as Krieger asking me questions about my background and poker writing — you can download and listen to the archived episode of “Keep Flopping Aces” over on the Rounders Radio site. Also, for more information about Krieger, his blog, and his books (including ways to order), visit his website at LouKrieger.com.

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