Shulman began playing poker while in college in the 1960s, but he didn't
have much time to hone his skills while working for the next 25 years as a
real estate developer in the Seattle area. It wasn't until the mid-1990s,
when he retired to Las Vegas and started playing more that he caught the
"poker bug."
Shulman decided to go back to work, and he used his retirement nest egg to
purchase Card Player, which he calls "the bible in the poker
industry" and which he read religiously to learn the game, in 1999.
Published 26 times a year, Card Player has expanded from being just
a free handout in casino poker rooms to a subscription publication that hit
newstands at the end of 2003.
The colorful 128 pages are still filled with casino ads, with a cover story
about a top player and additional columns by the best practitioners of the
game. "Here I am now, working harder than I've ever worked," Shulman says.
"Don't have time to play poker anymore, but I'm having a great time building
the magazine and our Internet site."
Business Week Online's Karyn McCormack recently spoke with Shulman about the
hot trend. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow:
Q: Why has poker become so popular?
A: Poker has always been fun, but it has always been in the background. It's
becoming popular because people are starting to see that it's fun, it's
safe, you can win money.
The single most important reason for what has happened to poker has been the
World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. They've done a fine job. They
have good, professional TV people. They have good, professional poker
players. They have a good budget. They built a beautiful set. They have
great commentary. They tell people how to play. And they've made it very
interesting on TV.
Now, you couple that with the Internet, where hundreds of thousands of
people are playing every week, and they can play for very small stakes or
they can even play for free. We have a site -- card player poker. You can
play for free, and yet you can win for real. And people are doing that, and
then they're getting comfortable in order to go into the casinos and play.
And a third thing that happened last year, which I think is very important,
is Jim McManus wrote a mainstream book -- it was a New York Times
Best Seller for many months -- called Positively Fifth Street
(Farrar Straus & Giroux, $26). He went and played in the World Series of
Poker and explained how fun it is and how anybody can win -- you don't just
have to be a pro.
Poker is different than other sports. The amateurs can play with the pros.
Anybody can play, all they have to do is come with their entry fee.
Furthermore, the amateurs can beat the pros.
Q: Is it really a matter of luck?
A: There's enough luck involved that anybody can play. And that has added a
lot to the fun of poker, because we see it on TV, we see regular people
winning $1 million. And it's not like the lottery, where maybe it's 1 chance
in 40 million -- it might be 1 chance in 1,000. But it's really happening.
Q: Why did the World Poker Tour
choose
Texas
HoldEm
as its favored game?
A: Texas
HoldEm
is fun because it's easy to learn, it's easy to play, it's very difficult to
master. It's easy to talk about on television. But there's a lot of action.
It's what we've been playing in the casinos for several years.
And that's good for the amateurs, because they have a better chance of
winning because of the luck factor. And it's good for the pros who play day
in and day out because, over time, luck levels out. And then the best player
wins, and so the pros have a lot of people they can play with.
Q: What's the economic model for this? Where are all the revenues coming
from?
A: Everything is driven at this point by the players. Meaning, we all put up
our own money. There's virtually no sponsor money yet in poker, no matter
what kind of poker we're playing. And there's all kinds of stakes, as you
know: very high limit and very low limit.
Like our Web site, it doesn't cost anything to play. But because there's so
many new people playing, the money is coming in from the new people who have
jobs. By far, most people who play poker are recreational players, and it's
entertainment. Like they might have money to go to a ballgame or a movie,
they have money to go play poker. And that's where the money is coming from.
It's the entertainment dollar.
Q: What kind of revenue growth do you see?
A: I can tell you that the Internet numbers are doubling every three or four
months, and have been for several years now. There are a couple of hundred
thousand people playing every single day on the Internet.
In the main casinos around the country, the poker rooms are up anywhere from
30% to 200% this year over last year. The World Poker Tour itself,
the events this year, are three times bigger than the same events were last
year. And it seems like every month when we go to a new event, it sets a
record.
Q: What's fueling the growth in online games?
A: It's really quite intimidating to walk into a casino if you're a rookie,
and nobody wants to be embarrassed by asking the wrong question or doing the
wrong thing. So online allows people to play for free. It allows them to
play for very low limits. And for people who want to play higher limits,
they can.
And a lot of the people who play poker are younger people. The younger
people are technologically driven, and they're more used to using the
Internet. It's just [running] along with the whole high-tech engine that's
driving the way we live these days.
Q: How can someone like me learn how to play?
A: Poker is easy to learn, and probably you mean how can you become better
from a strategy standpoint. The obvious way, to me, is to come to card
player daily. Most of our people are just like you. We have newsletters, we
have articles, we have tips on how to play, we have odds calculators, and
you can calculate how this hand works against that hand.
Q: Are you still playing every day?
A: No. I start to say "unfortunately," but actually, I've never had so much
fun. I've always loved business. I love deals. I thought I wanted to retire.
I was able to retire in the mid-'90s for a year or two. But then the poker
bug bit me, and I got back into it. I'm now spending every day just trying
to make this [magazine and Web site] a monster.
Q: How much have you won?
A: Maybe a million dollars. For me, a very big win is $100,000 or $200,000.
I've been able to do that once or twice every year for the last several
years. And it doesn't take too many of those kind of wins to pay for all the
entry fees.
Q: What's your secret?
A: I try to play my best game once in a while. I should play it more than
once in a while, but I try to calm down. I'm a type A personality. And one
of the reasons I bought Card Player was I read it cover to cover
when the poker bug bit me. And I work real hard at it.
My secret is to try to play my best game instead of going crazy, like other
people do sometimes. In order to win at poker, you need to be selectively
aggressive.