Poker Mags...

[stooo V2]

Which are you subscribed to?


I'm just wondering which would be best see. I've just put in a subscription for IP ad Cardplayer... any others you would recommend?

[SteveO]

Just InsidePoker and Poker Player for me. With InsidePoker being by far the best mag.

[Pocket Lady]

Poker Player

you could try Bluff magazine or if you go to the casino you can pick up freebies like:

Card Player
World Poker Tour

[GotaFancy?]

You cannot go wrong with £5 for 12 issues of Poker Player mag (through the APAT web site)

[Warbirds]

Originally Posted by GotaFancy?

You cannot go wrong with £5 for 12 issues of Poker Player mag (through the APAT web site)

If you're in the UK

Fred

[brael]

Poker Player and Inside Poker 'tho I must admit I'm considering cancelling. Dunno if it's that I'm just not playing anywhere near as much poker as I used to but I'm beginning to find them repetitive. How many articles on beating sit 'n go's and 'crushing cash games' do we really need?

[SteveO]

I know what you're saying Brael but it's worth it for the value in the freerolls alone. Obviously the mags are aimed at newcomers and there's always going to be a constant stream of those.

Is it really worth cancelling to save a couple of quid.

[slapdash]

Originally Posted by brael

Poker Player and Inside Poker 'tho I must admit I'm considering cancelling. Dunno if it's that I'm just not playing anywhere near as much poker as I used to but I'm beginning to find them repetitive. How many articles on beating sit 'n go's and 'crushing cash games' do we really need?

What I find most tedious about the poker mags are the tournament reports. "FamousPlayer goes all-in with AQ. NotSoFamousPlayer calls with AJ and hits a jack on the turn." Not exactly thrilling stuff.

I play bridge as well, and the better bridge mags have tournament reports by expert players with serious analysis of the play. It's probably a lot easier in bridge, but it would be nice to see a poker mag have a go.

[ColU_FC]

Originally Posted by brael

Poker Player and Inside Poker 'tho I must admit I'm considering cancelling. Dunno if it's that I'm just not playing anywhere near as much poker as I used to but I'm beginning to find them repetitive. How many articles on beating sit 'n go's and 'crushing cash games' do we really need?

I'm in the same boat as you brael. The cost of the mags is of little consequence, the investment of time in reading the mags is significant. There now seem to be very few articles where I come away feeling the time invested has been repaid. Maybe three years subscribing to Poker Player is long enough, I think I'm going to let my subscription lapse for several months until I feel I'm missing reading it and then I'll join up again.

[AlunB]

Originally Posted by SteveO

Obviously the mags are aimed at newcomers.

We're not...

[msaban]

I sub to PP and IP, both of which are excellent reads.

I also receive Pokernews, which is ok for a free mag, but by the time I receive it I've already read the subjects on most blogs or in other mags.

Lou brought me the latest copies of Flush, BLuff, Cardplayer, and PokerEuropa from DTD the other week, I was impressed by the first 3 as not seen for a while, especially impressed that the first 2 were poker mags and not lads mags with poker pages, that they used to be. I would/will./do read the readers wives for that.

[morlspin]

Flush, Bluff, PP, IP and Pokernews

[slapdash]

Originally Posted by AlunB

We're not...

Yours is easily my favourite of the poker mags I've seen. But I'd still rate it as "middlebrow", if that doesn't sound too insulting. Sorry to keep harping on about bridge mags, but there's one in particular ("Bridge World") that is clearly "highbrow". It has a long history, and a lot of theoretical advances in bridge first got popular exposure there. I know the games are rather different, and I honestly don't know how practical it would be to do something similar for poker ... but I'm still waiting hopefully.

[SteveO]

Originally Posted by AlunB

We're not...

Not specifically Alan but obviously u have to cater for newcomers otherwise your readership would eventually dry up.

[AlunB]

I agree with you Steve, and we don't want to totally alienate newcomers. But our target audience is the more advanced poker player. Our new readers hopefully come from players who are looking to take their game to the next level.

Slapdash. I think that is fair comment. I'm not sure the UK poker market is ready for a really highbrow mag just yet, but we are increasingly looking to add more for the higher stakes players. I would say though that covering poker tournaments with any degree of analysis is very very hard without seeing hole cards...

And thanks to everyone for the kind words. We really do appreciate it, and it means a lot. We welcome any feedback. PM me on here if you have specific comments as I don't want to derail this thread.

[Fluence]

I think that Poker Player magazine gives away more free-roll type seats to comps than virtually all the other mags and has content which is more in keeping with what I want to read. Some decent tit bits on strategy, some good interviews with top pro's, and also some good articles about people/events from back in poker history. Stu Unger, Amirillo Slim etc. I'd much rather read something about guys like that than some 19 year old Scandinavian who won a million on line playing 42 tables simultaneously!

They currently have a special offer on whereby you can get your first 3 issues for £1. See their website for details.

I also like the WPT magazine.

I personally do not subscribe to any mags as I visit bricks & mortar casino's on average once a week and you can pick up free copies in most of them.

The Broadway casino in Birmingham has at least 5 or 6 different mags in the poker room. So when I go there I tend to come out weighed down with reading material.

The Isle casino, at Coventry's new Ricoh Stadium, which I've been going to more often lately (because of it poker league) has only one or two different ones of poor quality.

It mainly has the ones that are printed in 3 different languages, and they annoy the hell out of me.

I would suggest that you try and visit a casino (if that's possible) and get a handful of freebies before taking the plunge and subscribing to one.

Hope that helps.

[slapdash]

Originally Posted by AlunB

I would say though that covering poker tournaments with any degree of analysis is very very hard without seeing hole cards...

I appreciate that. That's one of the reasons I said it was easier to do in bridge: in all serious tournaments (and most not-so-serious tournaments these days) the hands are computer dealt and hand records are readily available.

Though are there not many televised final tables in poker where all the hole cards are known? It would only be a small step to provide them for analysis.

[glceud]

Inside Poker has certainly "evolved" more than poker player and as such makes it a better read.
It is near impossible to continue to find original subjects to cover but IP has kept up with the small but important changes in the way online players play all hand times, tourney formats etc.
I am quite sure a "how to play pkt aces" feature today would not be exactly the same as one penned three years ago.
Its repetitiveness is very handy for those of us of an age that forget what we had for breakfast never mind how to play the bubble in a 3000 player $10 rebuy.

[JackJarvis]

I was subscribed to Inside Poker but didn't renew, wasn't overly impressed with them.

I like Poker Player, plenty of content and always a good read.

[wageringwar]

Originally Posted by brael

Dunno if it's that I'm just not playing anywhere near as much poker as I used to but I'm beginning to find them repetitive. How many articles on beating sit 'n go's and 'crushing cash games' do we really need?

Thanks, Brael, you've made me feel so much better. I write for a flyfishing mag and we constantly get stick for not 're-inventing the wheel' each and every issue; it's so nice to know mags in other fields have the same problem!

It's a valid point, though and as a poker player and as someone who works in the trade, I've enjoyed reading some of the points made in this thread. I'm particularly interested to read that I'm not the only one who's left cold by pages and pages on pasty-faced teenagers winning tournaments.

This might just be my age but I like articles that personalise the game and sell a bit of its romance. I enjoyed the feature that Poker Player did on what some of the top pros' homes look like, for example. I remember the days of Inside Edge when they'd look at some of the world's great casinos and that was good.

Because it's a game for both sexes, all ages and individuals rather than teams, there are some amazing characters out there and I think the enduring mags will be those who give us good human interest stories to go with all the EV calculations.

Personally, I think Poker Player gets a bad rap sometimes: I like the way they've kept their sense of humour in a game that is too often dominated by self-absorbed dullards with daft shades and bad skin.

Inside Poker is a smart-looking title but I have to say some of the subscription offers the mags are putting about make me wonder just how solid they are financially. I hope I'm wrong here but these are not halcyon days for the mag trade generally.

And if it's not trivialising the debate too much, the first title to feature Katja Thater naked gets my subs cheque by return...