What's Inside All-In Magazine?

I received the premier issue of All-In Magazine in the mail on Saturday. "The Magazine For The Poker Aficionado", lives up to that name in one area alone.

Quite comparable to the way Cigar Aficianado or even Vogue magazine will showcase their advertisements to the likes of high society, All-In Magazine did not fall short of including a pleasing photographic presentation on heavy-weight, high-gloss paper to its subscribers. Though I wouldn't consider putting it on the coffee table for show, the physical qualities of the magazine were impressive. The amount of content and diversity was not.

In its debuting issue, the magazine has feature articles written by world class poker professionals, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Phil Gordon. There is also a feature article written by WPT Ladies Invitational Champion, Clonie Gowen.

If you are not familiar with the latest business venture going on amongst these players, they are a fraction of, "Team Full Tilt", of FullTiltPoker.com, which spared no expense for promoting their brand new card room on 7 pages of the 86 page magazine, including several not-too-obvious promo's by way of team photographs strategically placed on pages where FTP-specific ads did not exist. Between the articles, advertisements and photographs, All-In Magazine's debut issue splattered FTP team photos, ads, and plugged the card room's URL across approximately 19 pages of the magazine; just roughly over 20% of the entire magazine's available number of pages to turn.

The balance of the advertisements included companies such as Belvedere Vodka, who artfully displayed six back-to-back pages of their product. Crown Royal kept their presence a bit less conspicuous, however noticeable. If you notice that I'm mostly writing about the contents of this magazine because of its advertising, it would be safe to assume that the actual gaming-related content and number of articles to actually read were short and few. 33% of the magazine had pages dedicated to ads, and 20% of that 33% was dominated by FTP. Any genuine "poker aficionado" would be able to do the math and make the connections. It lacked content, and diverse content, at that.

The remaining percentage (minus the table of contents that spanned three pages of large print and wide line spacing), left room for some Q&A's, a spread featuring the WPT's Shana Hiatt, and WSOP 2004 Player Profiles to be splashed in. An interview with the Co-Director of the World Series of Poker tournaments was nearly as interesting as reading primary books such as, "See Spot Run". The first questions and comments from the interviewer to initiate a response from the co-director, were, "How's your game?", and, "So I guess business is good?" With the poker explosion obvious to even those that don't play poker, how is this question worth anyone's time? Very little depth with the interview questions, naturally left very little depth in the interviewee's responses as a result.

The line-spacing between each printed line seemed to be extended and the font text was enlarged. Large print and extensive spacing makes for a very obvious feeling that there was a struggle in their ability to furnish any substantial content. Where there was no advertising, they could have spared to include something a bit more visually stimulating on these pages. More photographs of Belvedere Vodka, maybe? The amount of white space throughout the content pages would have made any high school journalism teacher want to pull out what hair they had left. The layout in some areas was atrocious.

The magazine, at best, is amateurly done. With the exception that the producer of this magazine approved the expense of fine paper and nice photography as fluff, if the magazine's format is not abruptly overhauled, its longevity on the market will be short-lived. Or of course, it could change its name to, "FullTiltPoker Magazine" and see how it fares from there. No true poker aficionado would hold interest in the magazine for very long. New players to the game wanting to look the part have an amusing conversation piece for when friends come over and take a quick glance at the magazine on the table.