Five Years of Bluff
For five years now BLUFF Magazine has been bringing you coverage of the poker world that nobody else has been able to deliver. This issue marks the fifth anniversary of the launch of the magazine and to say it’s been an interesting ride would be an understatement. From James Woods to Andy Beal to Doyle Brunson to Tom Dwan to Brian Hawkins, BLUFF has been at the forefront of the poker industry for half a decade.
“In 2003, I started doing a little research and realized there was really only one other poker magazine out. It was more of a technical magazine, strategy driven. It wasn’t really geared towards the recreational poker player,” says BLUFF cofounder Eric Morris. “So I came up with the idea of pitching the publishing company I was working with that we need to do a poker magazine. But then I just kind of thought, ‘Why am I pitching this magazine when I know how to publish a magazine? Why give a gift like this to someone?’ So I kind of shut up.”
And the idea for BLUFF Magazine was born. Morris approached good friend Eddy Kleid about starting the magazine and didn’t have a hard time convincing him. Kleid was working for an online casino software company and, like Morris, noticed the online gaming world was shifting its attention towards poker.
“I told (Eddy) we should do a poker magazine. He said, ‘I think it’s a great idea.’ I was like, ‘You’re going to do it with me? What you’re telling me is that you’ll quit your job and do this poker magazine with me?’” recalls Morris. “He said yes and we developed a business plan in 2003 and then opened BLUFF Media in the basement of my house in June of 2004. That’s how we got started.”
Since then BLUFF has gone on to become the leading magazine in the poker industry. Over the years poker pros like Annie Duke, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, and Brandon Cantu have all put pen to paper for the magazine, a signal that the magazine has the respect of the biggest names in the game.
“They’ve been fantastic. It kind of set the tone of the magazine – this is what it was going to be about – poker and the poker lifestyle,” says Kleid. “That’s one of the reasons our content was better than everyone else’s. Then we went out and got big personalities in poker, not the boring ones that everyone respected, but the ones with flair. Antonio and Annie have been writing for us since the first issue.”
That recognition also caught the attention of industry heavyweights like Harrah’s Entertainment. In 2006 Harrah’s signed BLUFF to broadcast the action from over twenty World Series of Poker preliminary event final tables on satellite radio. That relationship grew in 2007 when BLUFF was named official digital media partner of the WSOP, giving BLUFF Media exclusive rights to cover poker’s biggest event.
“Some of the most innovative things we’ve done came along with the deal with Harrah’s. We developed and operated the WSOP website for Harrah’s,” says Kleid. “In 2007, we sequestered the final table of some tournaments at the WSOP and did final table coverage with hole cards. It wasn’t quite live because there was a slight delay because of the Nevada Gaming Commission rules. One of the events we shot with hole cards was Phil Hellmuth winning his eleventh bracelet. We have the entire final table with hole cards archived.”
The relationship with Harrah’s certainly helped BLUFF expand its audience and opened doors for new deals along the way. But BLUFF is most proud of being an innovator in a constantly changing industry.
“I think we were the first people to do a live stream for coverage of any major tournament. We were the first to do the radio coverage. Finally, this brings us to this past summer where we broadcasted 24 events for both ESPN360 and BluffMagazine. com,” says Morris. “We’ve had some great relationships; obviously our biggest was with Harrah’s but we also developed a relationship with ESPN. We provide them with power rankings and a good portion of their poker content on ESPN.com. Those two really helped us skyrocket in popularity and brought a lot of traffic to our site and notoriety to our magazine. We always look for strong allies in the industry.”
Five years after that launch both Morris and Kleid are still very passionate about the game of poker and equally excited about where the game is going and what BLUFF’s place is in that world.
“Looking to the future, we’ve got a lot of good ideas coming. You can see them in the upcoming issues of BLUFF,” says Morris. “Right now, its just business as usual. And we see poker on the upside right now.”
“The bottom line here is that we love what we do. We love poker,” says Kleid. “It would take a lot for us to stop doing this.”
“I can’t imagine not doing it. We look forward to going to play in events,” says Morris. “Poker is always going to be part of our lives is some way, shape, or form. With BLUFF, I don’t know, I think the best is yet to come. We have so many ideas of what we want to do. We have the right people in place. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been so successful. The people that we’ve brought in are not only poker fans but have taken an ownership in it on a personal level.”
ISSUES OF NOTE
With five years of BLUFF in the books, we thought we’d have a look back at some of our most important and awe-inspiring issues to date.
James Woods, October 2004
It was Hollywood actor James Woods who first graced the cover of BLUFF; that alone should tell you all you need to know about how far we’ve come. However, the issue was stacked with articles from Josh Arieh, Howard Lederer, and Andy Bloch to name a few, giving readers just a glimpse of the great features that were in store. Antonio was, well, being Antonio and not much has changed there. Looking back, not a shabby start for BLUFF Magazine.
Phil Ivey, February 2006
It took over a year before the most feared man in poker made his first appearance on the cover of BLUFF and it was to mark our first-ever Player of the Year award, which has since gone on to set the industry standard on player rankings. The issue also featured a great article about the Big Game in Bobby’s room, Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly’s reports from the Caribbean, a sit down with Isabelle Mercier, and the Ultimate Bad Beat from Adam Slutsky, chronicling a bad beat jackpot hand gone awry./
Andy Beal, April 2006
The entire poker world stopped to follow the now-famous Andy Beal vs. the Corporation high stakes games that played out at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Then Managing Editor Matthew Parvis was following the action from the room and updating the world via his infamous Palm Treo in what could have been considered the original Twitter (minus the 140 characters that is). BLUFF went on to strike a deal with noted poker author Michael Craig, who sat and witnessed the games firsthand to write up the full account in the pages of our April issue. What resulted was essentially a few more chapters of Craig’s 2001 book The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King.
November Nine, September 2008
Oddly the cover marking the first-ever November Nine was the first-ever BLUFF cover without a person on it; the significance of the event for poker was enough to sell itself. BLUFF chronicled the 2008 Main Event as it played down to its first delayed final table, brought you the top ten stories of the WSOP, and discussed the return of Archie “the Greek” Karas to Vegas. Phil Laak was dressed like an elderly man which forever changed WSOP rule books, and strategy was getting much more sophisticated with articles on heads-up PLO, utilizing “M”, and an in-depth look at energy drinks.
Tom “durrrr” Dwan, February 2009
Not only was the durrrr cover a huge deal as it broke the story of his million-dollar challenge to the world, but it was also the first time an online superstar made the cover of BLUFF. The Internet age had finally become big enough to trump the notable live pros who claimed all previous covers, as Dwan told his story of turning a small deposit in high school into a million-dollar bankroll. The issue also featured BLUFF’s fourth annual Power Twenty, now highly anticipated by fans and folks in the industry alike. It also marked a change in the types of education available to poker players, from Sam Chauhan’s mindset tips to Dr. T.J. Allen discussing tournament nutrition.
Didn’t save these issues? Don’t worry, they’re all available online at BluffMagazine.com.
