Cardplayer Lifestyle

About this site

Cardplayer Lifestyle is an independently owned poker media site covering interviews, strategy, op-eds, lifestyle features, and live-event stories for recreational players and fans. Robbie Strazynski founded it in 2009 as a nights-and-weekends project, later leaving a full-time online-gaming job to run the brand. The About page still stresses that it has always been 100% independently owned and is not affiliated with Card Player magazine. The live product mixes long-form interviews, training-site reviews, podcasts, and coverage of WSOP, WPT, EPT, and smaller festivals rather than a tournament-results database or a poker-room ranking desk.

Its clearest differentiator versus CardPlayer is the job. CardPlayer is a 1988 tournament magazine with Player of the Year standings and results archives; this listing is a 2009 lifestyle-and-interview newsroom. It is also distinct from PokerNews, whose core value is wall-to-wall live reporting, and from Upswing Poker, which sells coach-led training courses and tools. CardsChat and TwoPlusTwo remain forum-first communities; Cardplayer Lifestyle is founder-led editorial media with contributing writers.

Because the Mixed Game Festival events that started in 2021 at Westgate, Resorts World, Bellagio, and Malta’s Portomaso Casino carry operator-sponsored prizes from brands such as PokerStars, BetMGM, and PokerGO, commercial relationships sit beside the media product. Even so, Cardplayer Lifestyle is a strong online-poker listing because it adds an independent lifestyle newsroom the directory currently lacks beside CardPlayer and PokerNews.