The poker world is in a state of shock this morning after the unexpected death of Andy Glazer from complications with a blood clot. Andy is widely considered the best poker writer in the world. He wrote a weekly column, Wednesday Night Poker, that focused on both the personalities and the strategy of the game. For the past several years, he wrote a daily column from the World Series of Poker. It must have been a relatively grueling process, churning out a few thousand words every day for 4 or 5 weeks, but he always managed to capture the events of each day well enough that you felt like you were there even if you were reading from 1500 miles away. He was also a fairly accomplished poker player himself.
I didn't know Andy except through e-mail. Over the course of the last few years, he and I exchanged e-mails several times, usually initiated when he read something I had written in the poker newsgroup and responded. Sometimes it was encouragement to keep up the fight on some issue, other times it was to answer a question I had posed. In our exchanges, he always struck me as not only a nice man, but a good man, and that is something in relatively short supply on this planet. So goodbye Andy. The world of poker is undoubtedly poorer for your passing.