Andrew N.S. Glazer

Although born in the film-infamous town of Amityville, NY, Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer grew up in neighboring Massapequa, NY, the hometown of Alec Baldwin, Jerry Seinfeld, and Steve Guttenberg. He has been a writer for most of his life. His early writing focused on sports: he was sports editor of his Plainedge High School ('73) newspaper, Managing Sports Editor of the University of Michigan's "Michigan Daily." His interest in journalism continued when he attended law school at Emory University ('80), where he was Editor-in-Chief of the school paper. At Michigan ('77), Glazer also broadcast U of M basketball and hockey games for the college radio station, doing both play-by-play and color commentary. Glazer clerked for Judge Dorothy Beasley (now a Georgia Appellate Court Justice) and practiced law for two years, but left the practice in rather dramatic fashion. Representing a cocaine dealer who was plainly and obviously guilty, Glazer defied conventional strategy by putting his client on the stand at his preliminary hearing. He felt there were facts about the search that might not suffice to obtain a dismissal, but which might annoy a grand jury, and sure enough, the grand jury refused to indict his client, the first time a Fulton County grand jury had "no-billed" a drug case in two years. The day after informing his jubilant client, Glazer received five telephone calls from cocaine dealers who wanted to put Glazer on retainer. Already suffering a crisis of conscience at putting the original client back on the street, Glazer retired from the practice of law that very day, figuring (correctly) that he could make his living playing backgammon until he decided what his next professional challenge would be. Although Glazer did eventually leave backgammon for two forays into the business world (including one in which he wrote, produced and directed a four-hour documentary about law school, a half-hour version of which appeared on The Learning Channel), his creative side (he'd already written, directed and starred in several one-act plays) kept tugging at him, and he left the business world in 1992 in order to write fiction, planning on supporting himself by playing poker. Curiously, the poker aspect of this plan worked just fine, but the writing didn't; although he completed several novellas and short stories, he never did finish a novel. Just as he was beginning to enter the film business (he'd served as a gambling techical advisor for the television pilot adaptation of John Grisham's "The Client"), his three-year relationship to Dr. Cornelia Cho ended, and Glazer decided to take a month-long "timeout" to attend the Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California. He left Atlanta in June, 1995. Glazer quickly fell in love with the world-famous health spa and educational center, and his planned one-month stay turned into a two-year residence. Glazer worked as a chef and earned a massage certification during this time, but the years were more notable for the four additional one-act plays he wrote, directed, and starred in, as well as a bizarrely coincidental hot tub encounter with 1989 World Series of Poker Champion Phil Hellmuth, Jr. This meeting led to a friendship that eventually pulled Glazer into the world of professional poker, where he used his sportswriting experience to quickly establish himself as the world's foremost poker tournament reporter. He also finally finished a book, albeit non-fiction: "Casino Gambling the Smart Way" (Career Press, 1999). Once his new path as a professional poker player and writer was established, it didn't take very long for television and the movies to take notice. Being called "a poker scholar" in the May 17, 1999 issue of Newsweek Magazine probably didn't hurt. Glazer appeared in the Discovery Channel's broadcasts of both the 1999 and 2000 World Series of Poker, was invited into the ESPN broadcast booth in 2002, and served as a Techical Advisor for a seven-part ESPN documentary about the 2003 World Series. Recently, Glazer received a great deal of attention in the 2003 bestseller "Positively Fifth Street," by James McManus, a book about McManus' experiences at the 2000 World Series. Glazer now lives in Hollywood, California. Although his ties to the film, stage, and television worlds continue to grow, he still earns the bulk of his income by writing about gambling. He is a weekly gambling columnist for The Detroit Free Press, and a columnist and Poker Tournament Editor for Card Player Magazine. He is working with Hellmuth on a biography entitled "Poker Brat," and has several other poker book projects in the pipeline. Nonetheless, he willingly concedes that he would give up poker "in a New York minute" if he could obtain his dream job: writing teleplays for, or obtaining a role in, either "Stargate SG-1" or "Enterprise." While Glazer's feet appear planted firmly beneath his computer, his heart appears to be somewhere in outer space.