Stakes high as gambling guru writes on God - Kids playing poker led to the change

Poker's red hot, especially among young people, and that's what has led a nationally known expert on gambling from Michigan to pick up his publishing chips -- and put them down on God.

John Gollehon, a top author and publisher of how-to-win books on gambling for four decades, is so frustrated with the marketing of poker to young people that he's turning his small Grand Rapids publishing house, Gollehon Books, upside down.

From here out, he said, he won't release any new gambling books and instead will print a new line of traditionally minded Christian books.

"What got me so upset is the glamorization of poker to young people and the opportunistic grabs by online operators of poker Web sites to try to hook young people," Gollehon said this month. "I'm hearing about kids 10 and 12 years old who get hooked until Mom's or Dad's credit card bill shows up, and there's a whole lot of explaining to do."

As a leading professional in the gaming industry -- and someone who still personally enjoys gambling -- "that development just embarrasses me and has led to this change," Gollehon said.

So, at age 60, Gollehon is betting everything he's got on the equally cutthroat business of religious publishing. He said his edge in this new game is an opening in the inspirational market for a line of high-quality hardbacks that will take a traditional Protestant look at the religious world.

"I'd like to find books like 'Caesar and Christ' by Will Durant," Gollehon said, referring to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of dozens of books about world history and philosophy that were popular from the 1930s through the 1950s.

Gollehon, a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, plans to couple Durant-style books with new titles by cutting-edge conservative Christian writers who appeal to twentysomething readers. He'd like to sign authors like the hot new import from Great Britain, the irreverent but orthodox evangelist Adrian Plass -- though Zondervan, a far larger Christian publisher in Grand Rapids, already snapped up Plass' work.

So, this summer, Gollehon is trying his luck with his own first Christian title, a thriller in the genre of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" called "The Finding." He penned the book under the name J.R. Shannon "to symbolize that I'm taking a whole new direction after all those gambling books," he said.

As a business venture, it's a long shot, Phyllis Tickle, a Tennessee-based expert on religious publishing, said this month. "He understood his gambling niche and was successful at that. Now, he's diving into a field that's already just flooded with books.

"But the truth is that, if he can turn his publishing house into a resonant new voice that can speak to readers under age 35 with a conservative Christian tone, and he can explore the ancient disciplines of the church with a classic voice like a Will Durant -- then he could wind up with a loyal audience that will reward him fully for his efforts."

Some of his lifelong friends in the gambling business don't understand Gollehon's change of heart, he said. One problem is that there's little scientific data to support claims of an upswing in problem gambling, so Gollehon's warnings about young gamblers can't be proven.

"I think within five years, we are going to see clear signs that there's a growing problem with kids starting to play games like poker in junior high and sometimes younger than that," Judith Herriff, executive director of the nonprofit Michigan Association on Problem Gambling, said this month.

"But," she added, "enough data isn't out there yet to clearly show the problem. We need more research."

At this point, Herriff said, "We've been saying that the state of Michigan is pretty close to the national rate, which is that about 3.5% of the population has a problem with gambling."

Gollehon, however, regards the issue as deeper than gambling addiction.

"It's a question of values when kids 10 or 12 years old are exposed to gambling. It tends to destroy a person's work ethic. It promotes the whole idea of getting something for nothing, especially when you see players not only winning, but winning outlandishly huge amounts in these TV poker tournaments," he said.

Despite his major change in direction, Gollehon said, "I'm not anti-gambling. I think the problem is the proliferation of gambling across the U.S. so that it's available to everyone now all the time. Now, too many people are involved in gambling, and a lot of them don't understand about it."

If he's going to sway them from other pursuits, Gollehon said, he knows that his books have to be appealing -- like Brown's extremely popular novel.

"I don't like 'The Da Vinci Code,' because I think it confuses people about Christianity," Gollehon said. "But young people will read that book and they went to see the movie. I see a real opportunity there, if we publish something for them that's worth reading."

So far in Grand Rapids, Gollehon's strategy is a game in progress. He has temporarily taken down his www.gollehonbooks.com Internet site. A blue page has replaced it, promising future information about new lines of books.

Tickle said she'll be watching. "Within a year, he could wind up losing his shirt on this, or he could wind up with something to really shout about," she said.