Three-letter review of the new issue of All-In Magazine: wtf?

[Jordan Olsommer]

No, seriously - wtf?

I was under the impression that there were only two issues ever printed of this publication, but another poster stated that he subscribed and received four. In any event, I picked up the new issue (with Doyle on the cover) today, and this magazine did a complete 180 from the first issue I saw (the one with Chris Ferguson on the cover). For example, in the first issue there were actual articles about poker strategy [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

This one, on the other hand, could pretty much be renamed "TV Guide: Poker Edition"

Let's see what we have here:

- "The Flop" a bunch of press-release-esque tidbits, mostly "reporting" the release of television programs, Daniel Negreanu's videogame, the DVD release of "High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story", and the Chris Moneymaker book. At the risk of being sued by the publishers of All-in Magazine, here's a synopsis of this section with no loss of content:

"There are many television programs about poker on the horizon, Daniel Negreanu has a videogame coming out, check out Chris Moneymaker's book, and there's a movie about Stu Ungar that just came out on DVD."

Man, they could've saved so much in ink and paper alone it's ridiculous.

- Celebrity Poker Rundown: a complete...well, rundown of every episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown from this season, and four hands listed from the grand finale game. These four hands are the only hand analyses in the entire magazine. Yes, really.

- "The River": a photo gallery of celebrities and pros gathered together for a tournament celebrating the inauguration of bet on sports poker. Did you know Nicole Ritchie played poker at this event? Neither did I. Now three seconds of my life and more than a few neurons have been completely wasted reading and remembering this fact.

- "Living Legend and Action Hero: An Exclusive Interview with Doyle Brunson". Pretty much self-explanatory, and pretty much the only thing worth reading in the entire magazine.

- "An Excerpt from Super System 2": I think this is useless, and I'll tell you why. Firstly, most of the people buying all-in magazine are probably going to own Super System 2 in the first place. And secondly, this is supreme editorial laziness in my opinion. Last issue we had original articles from Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer on strategy - why couldn't they write for this issue too?

- An enormous (43 pages) advertising section promoting the NBC heads-up poker championship containing photos, a two-page blank bracket for people who apparently have run out of ways to attempt suicide and thus feel the need to keep score on a poker tournament at home, and 64 player bios (which not surprisingly are the exact same content that is available at the website for the heads-up tournament). Are you sitting down? Well of course you are, unless you use your computer while standing up. And if you do, please sit down. Now that all of you are sitting, get this: this advertising section comprises almost half of the entire magazine. Yep.

- "All-Star Poker with Michael Jordan"; an original article by Phil Gordon where he uses poker as the backdrop for namedropping. Pretty much the same as the "new england patriots play poker" article in the Jesus Ferguson issue.

- "On & Off Track" - an article about the nascar poker tournaments on Speed TV. NASCAR and poker - together at last....

- "Poker and the English Language" - an article by Richard Lederer (who wrote the wonderful book "Anguished English", and is of course Howard Lederer and Annie Duke's father). This article is really....bad? Sorry, I lost my thesaurus. In any event, the article describes in a very basic manner the origin of some poker terms, not by doing the straightforward thing (listing them along with their origins , glossary-style), but rather including them in the text nestled in puns with learning disabilities, and in bold italic (in case you don't have an eagle eye, I guess). Do yourself a favor and don't get lost in the shuffle; you might find yourself drawing dead if you read this complete piece of crap.

- "All Business: Playing Poker, New York Hedge Fund Style" - the other shining star in this magazine. Katy Lederer invites a bunch of Wall Street nerds to play poker with her and writes about the goings-on. Read this and the doyle brunson interview, put the magazine back on the rack, and walk out of the barnes and noble like nothing happened.

- Tournament Round-Up: Tournament results you couldn't find anywhere else, assuming you had no access to cardplayer magazine, pokerpages.com, or really just the internet at all. Next!

- "Ten-Seven Suited": an OK article about the differences between the poker you see on the WPT TV broadcasts and the poker you play. Hence the title; they can play ten-seven suited, but you can't. So don't even try. I'm serious. Connie Slockbower (wow, she's definitely got some surplus karma coming for being stuck with that surname) will kick your ass if you do.

- "Body English Spoken Here": Antonio Esfandiari's guide to nightclubbing. No, really. Complete with the obligatory "you know you've had too much to drink when you think something's Not Quite Right and Lo! You are actually on the floor!" joke.

- "Presidential Poker": Presidents who play poker. Did you know the nipples on Howard Taft's enormous man-breasts would shrivel up whenever he was bluffing? OK, so that's not true, but it's made-up facts like this that would have made this article decent.

And the cherry on top - the last feature in the magazine is a page of photographs of Annie Duke's Birthday Party which are low-resolution to the point of being pathetic. Up until now, I was not aware that Jesus Ferguson's face could be represented by only four pixels. Ain't technology neat?

So yeah, I'm a bit disappointed with this effort. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] If anyone from all-in is reading this (*deludes a healthy heaping of grandeur*) please please PLEASE go back to the way it was - Cardplayer is good, but I'm sick of it being the only game in town.

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