You may not have heard of ‘StarCraft’ but in Korea players of this popular video game are treated as celebrities, as Sean Callander reported...

Daniel Schreiber is as close to a ‘hometown’ player battling it out for the APPT Seoul title.

Like fellow Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Team PokerStars member Guillaume Patry, Schreiber relocated to Korea (from his home in Commack, New York) to compete as a professional Starcraft player. Yep, that’s right, a video game.


Daniel Schreiber

The trio are treated like celebrities here, and can’t go out without being swamped by fans of the game. Like Grospellier and Patry, Schreiber turned his focus to poker and quickly built a reputation as one of the top high stakes players.

He turned that practice to immediate success when he captured the $5000 Heads-up championship at the 2007 World Series of Poker, becoming the fifth youngest WSOP bracelet winner ever.

“I've played for a while now. I started out playing ring games or the six-handed but then I started testing myself with heads-up,” Schreiber said.

“I learned a lot from the players who had more experience and who were probably better than me. I took that experience and used that to improve my game to the point where it is today.”

But for a player who honed his skills on a video game, did Starcraft offer any preparation for the cut-throat world of poker?

“You’d be surprised, StarCraft and poker are similar games. I like to say they are both games of missing information. You have to figure out what your opponent is doing, then use that information against them. If you're good at StarCraft, you’re likely to be good at poker.”