Put us in, Coach; we’re ready to play.
Many of you are seeing Ante Up this month for the first time, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been around the poker scene for quite some time. Our publication began nearly three years ago as Florida’s poker magazine, focusing on the local players and cardrooms that make this game so great. But it soon hit us: Doesn’t everyone deserve to have their accomplishments recognized?
So, like a chess Grand Master, we were patient in lining up our pieces, getting great writers such as tells expert Joe Navarro and world-class pro Jonathan Little to come aboard, expanding to the terrific poker rooms around the Gulf Coast and southeast corner of the country while enlisting talented correspondents in key states. Eventually we found our way up the Eastern Seaboard until we had half of the country covered. But we, too, had a manifest destiny, and decided to head West.
This month you’ll notice we’ve added a few Ante Up Ambassadors to the Northeast, Indiana, Las Vegas and Chicagoland areas, and we couldn’t be more excited. These ambassadors are passionate about poker and will keep you abreast of the happenings in their respective areas, recognizing those who make a difference in their poker rooms and events. Oklahoma, California and other vital poker hotspots around the country will be in our sights in the coming months.
You can feel free to contact our ambassadors if there’s something going on in your poker world you feel should be addressed in Ante Up. And that includes poker room managers and staff. We know how hard it is to be noticed by other national publications, so why not make Ante Up yours, too?
Our magazine is dedicated to everyday players and their poker rooms. Yes, we’ll have features and cover stories about mainstream poker players, but the core of our magazine always will be reporting on the news that most affects you and your local rooms.
To all of our readers who have been with us from the beginning, thank you for your support and we hope our expansion makes Ante Up all the more valuable to you and all the more exciting when you see yourself featured on our pages. We’ll see you at the tables.
— Christopher Cosenza and Scott Long
