Card Runners: Small Business Blog of the Day

At this moment in Las Vegas, the 2006 World Series of Poker main event is taking place. For a measly $10,000, you could be one of the 8,773 poker players vying for the top prize of $12 million or one of 872 other prizes ranging from $6 million to about $15,000. Today is day 6 in the event that will last nearly another week until 12 millionaires remain to duke it out for the title of World Champion.

If you haven't heard of the World Series of Poker, I'd like to welcome you to America and/or Europe from wherever you've been the past three years. Since an accountant named Chris Moneymaker won the main event in 2003, the event has skyrocketed in fame and TV ratings, and online poker has completely taken off as well (Moneymaker paid his $10,000 buy-in for the event by winning a $39 tournament on an online poker website).

What it is
Card Runners is a website offering strategy advice from some of the world's top online poker players. Though unknown to the general public, these are some of the toughest poker players in the world, many of them younger than 25. Videos of their games, including commentaries of their play, are available from the site for $5-8 a piece, or included in a membership to the site. Membership includes access to the players' blogs, although you don't need to have a membership to read them if you know where to look. Here are the blogs currently on the website:

• Taylor Caby
• Andrew Wiggins
• Andy Hasdal
• Ezra
• Aislephive
• spudt24
• gaucho21

Features
The blogs include posts about each player's life as it revolves around poker. Some of the players are now playing professionally, some are still pursuing other careers with poker a part-time endeavor. The players discuss hands that they played, parties they've attended, and other experiences having something to do with poker.

Favorite Post
I'm going to choose two, one by Taylor and one by Andrew. Taylor wrote about playing in the main event just a couple of days ago:

"The last hand came 45 minutes later when the same guy raised to 800 in CO and taylor pushed in the small blind for his last 2600. The guy called with A,9 which was dominated by Taylor's offsuit A,K...but fate once again reward the loose call and he turned the straight to eliminate Taylor."

Meanwhile, Andrew is pursuing a different goal over the next month:

"It's on - 85k in 31 days...The bad thing about only doing this for one month opposed to three is that if I run bad, I could be in a world of hurt as far as reaching the goal. That's ok, I'm willing to accept failure if that occurs."

Further Comments
Fascinating. I have nothing bad to say about these blogs and the method with which they are being used with the website. Although these blogs are available to the general public (via the site map link on the home page and then the blogs link), they are not easy to find. Instead, the blogs are advertised as a perk to membership when you join the site (at a steep $70 + $20/month after the first month). Therefore, when you join you feel like you are getting privileged access to these top players' lives which might be worth the $70 for some people right there. But the really interesting thing is you can find these blogs without having to pay membership. I think they did this on purpose so some people can feel extra smart, like they are getting away with something when they find the blogs. The insidious thing is that the more you read the blogs, the more you get hooked on the players, and the more you want the rest of the membership. Either way, the partners at Card Runners totally win!

This is an excellent example of a good website that uses several marketing approaches like having blogs, offering different tiers of membership, offering a free sample, and using testimonials to convince you to make the purchase. Great job guys.

One last thing...I would like to see pictures on some blog posts to hold my attention. Right now I don't see any.

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