Card Player vs. Poker Digest

This may not be the appropriate message board

to ask this, but I was wondering which publication

people here enjoyed the most. Any and all

opinions welcome.


Christopher Mayer

I read them both online and would have to say I like cardplayer better. This is partly due to the fact that they post more articles online than poker digest. However if I was going to subscibe I would get Poker Digest because I can already read Cardplayer for free.

which is probably why poker digest doesn't post as many articles online.


in a related question; do casinos pay for the magazines they have laying around for free? i mean, you walk into the casino, and they have a rack of about 200 or so (maybe more sometimes) copies of pokerdigest and cardplayer out on display, free for the taking. is the casino paying for 200+ subscriptions? or some bulk rate? or not at all? or maybe they advertise in the mags and in return for their patronage they receive a certain number of free mags?

I've always assumed the casinos are paying for these magazines as a service to their players- like a comp. How could anything else be true? Card Player and Poker Digest couldn't possibly be giving out tens of thousands(?) of their magazines every two weeks for free.

Actually, I believe the card rooms and casinos get them for free. These magazines make most of their money through advertisements not through individual subscription sales. An individual has to pay to get a subscription but I do not believe the card rooms pay anything. But I could be mistaken.

Unless things have changed dramatically (and there's no reason to believe they have), yes, CP and PD give away many many copies to casinos and cardrooms. The huge bulk of their income comes from advertising.


I believe that some years ago, the cost of a CP subscription was just about their cost to ship the magazine to the subscriber - it was really just a service to people who couldn't get to a copy otherwise. That may no longer be true - quite simply I don't know.


Regards, Lee

this sounded more likely. casinos aren't likely to pay for anything that makes the gap between good and bad players bigger. it seems to me that the smaller the gap in skill levels, the longer the money gets pushed back and forth over the rake so the house gets its cut.


at any rate, does it really cost that much to get the magazine to my doorstep?