It's a Jungle Out There

Glenn Fine, chairman and CEO of the public company Casino Journal Publishing Group – publishers of the now defunct Poker Digest, hit the nail on the head when he said "… the Poker market (is) not big enough to sustain two profitable magazines."

Things have been very tough the past year, particularly since Sept. 11. We at Card Player feel an obligation now to do an even better job than we may have done in the past. The reason is that you will now have only one publication from which to get all of your poker information.

People read Card Player for different reasons. Some want strategy articles, and others want to know who won various tournaments. Some prefer anecdotes, while others don't even read many of the articles, but are interested in looking at the advertisements to find out about upcoming events, promotions, and tournaments.

Make no mistake about it, our job is to promote poker and help bring it to the mainstream. Our mission statement is on our website, www.CardPlayer.com, and it hasn't changed a bit.

There is only one way that we can stay in business – by receiving sufficient advertising revenue. Remember, every time you pick up Card Player, for whatever purpose, that's made possible only as a result of the support we have from our advertisers.

Fine's press release pointed out that Shulman Media (Card Player's parent company) bought out Poker Digest. As many of you know, magazines really don't have too much in the way of hard assets. We have a few computers, some furniture, and a big bulletin board upon which we lay out the pages of each upcoming issue. Our real asset is the goodwill that we have built up. We hold on to this goodwill and hope that it translates into advertising in the next issue from various casinos, and this, in turn, covers our costs.

We produce about 50,000 magazines every two weeks that contain approximately 128 pages each. We don't see that changing materially. However, we were afraid that Poker Digest subscribers would be left in the lurch. Since our poker community is so small and we must support each other, we agreed to fulfill all of Poker Digest's subscriptions with complimentary subscriptions to Card Player. So, to all of our new subscribers, we say, "Welcome aboard!" And to all of you who have been with us all along, we appreciate it, "Thank you!"