CardPlayer.com Online

Recently I was asked, how is CardPlayer.com good for poker? After much thought and discussion with my partner Barry Shulman, I came up with the following answer: CardPlayer.com is interested in giving poker players more chances to win money playing poker – with less risk – and have more fun. I don't know if that's good for poker, but it sure sounds like it's good for the players.

The new www.CardPlayer.com is going to offer that and, hopefully, more. Barry and Jeff are insisting that CardPlayer.com be the poker leader online, just as it is in the print media. So, how are we going to do it?

Well, in the future, we're going to be giving away $1,000 daily in freeroll tournaments. We've spent a lot of time and money in legal research in order to make sure that our contests will be totally legal in most states, with convenient availability of prize money in local cardrooms.

CardPlayer.com will make every Card Player issue available online. Using a state-of-the-art database, players can search all online issues by key word, writer, or designated category. For example, if you were interested in articles on hold'em, you'd go to the search page and select hold'em. All Card Player articles online that are about hold'em will be listed.

You could get articles by any one writer by selecting the writer's name. All of the writer's articles from all issues would be listed. In the future, we will add strategies and other categories to unitize the power of the Internet for content selection.

Card Player's Tournament Trail will provide tournament schedules, and tournament results will be promptly posted.

We also are planning to have daily listings of bad-beat jackpot sizes in various casinos, and hopefully will be updating the games being spread on a regular basis throughout the day.

There will be a questions-and-answer feature, crossword puzzle, and instructions on how to get to the poker newsgroup – rec.gambling.poker. Card Player Analyst will be available free to online subscribers, so they will be able to keep track of their play on our secure servers. Our online Card Player store will make it easier and more secure than before to order books and other special offerings.

There is a section for Card Player's Player of the Year standings. Players can see what various players' point counts are, even in the middle of a tournament, as they will be updated regularly.

Our Opt-in Newsletter program will allow players to receive regular information on subjects of their choice. We plan on having newsletters for Southern California, Nevada, Northern California, the Northwest, the Rockies, the Plains, the Midwest, the South, the Southwest, and the East Coast. There will be newsletters for tournaments and special promotions. All of our newsletters will conform to a very strict privacy policy; we will not sell or rent our lists to anyone.

Poker and the Internet are a perfect match, and I love playing poker! Barry teases me all the time about how my eyes light up when I get the opportunity to sit down to play. I love the Internet – I've been online since 1984 (300 baud modems), and gave up on chat rooms in 1986 but probably will be back now, as we're planning on some chat rooms and chat radio shows. My only disappointment is that lately, working with Card Player on CardPlayer.com, I've found myself in cardrooms and casinos for meetings, and have not been getting a chance to play.

As Barry mentioned in his column, I have invested my time, money, and company's resources because I think Card Player is the strongest name in poker. Most of the magazine's writers are winning players, as I see them playing in live games and in tournaments. The magazine is second to none, and CardPlayer.com will be second to none.

Please visit www.CardPlayer.com and let us know what you think. If there's something we can add, we'll try. E-mail me: [email protected].

Editor's note: Marshall Ragir is a partner in www.CardPlayer.com. He has spent 25 years in the film industry as a screenplay writer, director, producer, and film editor. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and a retired member of the IATSE Film Editors Union. He sits on the board of directors of Home Products International (Nasdaq, HPII) and is on the board of a number of charitable organizations. He is a recreational poker player who has reached final tables in the World Series of Poker, Binion's Hall of Fame, and the Carnivale of Poker.