Stoxpoker Merges with Cardrunners: Expanded Stoxpoker No-Limit Hold’em Instruction and Special Membership Pricing Announced

StoxPoker and Cardrunners have merged to form the most comprehensive poker training service featuring the largest library of training videos and deepest roster of top instructors available. StoxPoker.com will be maintained as separate web properties with significant benefits for both existing and prospective members, including:

1. Zero-Cost Activation Fee: For a limited time, StoxPoker will drop the $99 sign-up fee for new members and offer a 33% discount for twelve month memberships. Members that paid the $99 sign-up fee within the last 30 days will receive an additional 3 months for FREE.

2. Narrowly Focused Instruction: StoxPoker will continue to emphasize small- and mid-stakes games instruction through classroom-style learning, StoxPoker University, and personal coaching. Similarly, CardRunners will continue to deliver premier training services for advanced poker players, highlighted by its all-star roster of high-stakes instructors including Brian Townsend, Cole South, Brian Hastings and Taylor Caby.

3. Affordable Joint Memberships: StoxPoker members can add 6 or 12 months of CardRunners at rates discounted up to nearly 25%.

4. New Stoxpoker Small and Mid-Stakes NLH Instructors. Effective immediately, Stoxpoker has significantly expanded its Small and Mid-Stakes NLH instruction staffs with the addition of 11 new coaches and 3 new Featured Instructors!

5. Expanded Stoxpoker Video Release Schedule And Several Video Series Announced. Stoxpoker is adding several new video series and increasing the number of videos released each month. See the Details on all the new videos to be released for the rest of September.

To commemorate this historic partnership:

• Beginning on September 9, 2008, ten instructional videos from CardRunners will be available to all Stoxpoker premium members as they are released over the course of the next several weeks.

• A free 24-hour trial to CardRunners will be available starting noon CST on September 9, 2008 and ending at noon CST September 30, 2008 when you text “cardrunners” to 32075 on your cell phone.

"We're delighted to add breadth and depth to our poker training resources while delivering a decisive competitive advantage to more than 14,000 members," said Taylor Caby, co-founder of CardRunners. "Members now have two separate platforms to choose from as well as a no-sign up fee option which many customers have requested. Whether you are new to poker or playing nose-bleed stakes, we’ll make sure you’re ready with the top resources behind you."

“Stoxpoker Coaches and Customers now have more resources behind them than ever before,” said Nick “stoxtrader” Grudzien. “Our merger with CardRunners will deliver more value to our customers and allow our coaches to spend even more time on what they do best - produce well communicated
training content for small and Mid-stakes players in almost all games.”

Stoxpoker.com is dedicated to a single mission: to be the best poker training site in the world. Our world-class poker coaches, who won over $5,000,000 playing online in 2007, have a passion to teach the game of poker. We release an average of 10 videos a week. Their formats range from classroom-style, with interactive quizzes, to traditional sessions, with critical narration of key hands, decisions, and concepts. Whatever the method, the goal is always to have the highest possible teaching value.

Visit http://www.stoxpoker.com for our announcement and answers to frequently asked questions

CardRunners.com is the premier online learning community for poker education. CardRunners provides a wide variety and depth of exclusive educational resources, all with the single-minded focus of developing winning poker players. CardRunners' original, dynamic and interactive content comes from some of the world's best poker minds—self-made poker millionaires who regularly beat the toughest games and . Now with more than 10,000 paying subscribers and hundreds of instructional videos, CardRunners continues to cement its role as the first choice in poker education.

Visit http://www.cardrunners.com for our announcement and answers to frequently asked questions

I can understand financially why the move was made, but stuff like this:

Just rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

How do you mean? Could you elaborate?

There is actually very little direct financial benefit from the merger as both companies overhead was already rather efficient.

The financial benefit will only be realized if the changes we are able to make such as no sign-up fee, more options for customers, and cross-site discounts are received positively by the customers and contribute incremental growth.

Bottom line . . . this is driven by a desire to offer more value to customers and then the financial benefit will follow.

I look forward to the merger guys, good to be aboard with you all!

I guess my first reaction was that it made it seem like Stox was minor league, CR was the big leagues with the real superstar instructors, etc. I'm sure that's not what was meant...although if I have to hear how great CR is every Stox newsletter I may vomit...

I could be wrong but if this was a merger, then we would be entitled to cardrunners videos at no cost, but yet we get it at up to 25% discount. Doesn't make sense.

We remain committed to providing superior value to our members. By merging, we are able to enhance our services for our members at substantial cost-savings compared to individual subscriptions. As with any business transaction of this nature, there is a cost to providing improvements--only the members who choose to take advantage of the merger benefits will pay an additional fee. There is no reduction in our content, no general fee increase, and no shortage of new talented instructors working at CardRunners and StoxPoker. We're especially pleased to be able to eliminate the StoxPoker sign-up fee. We hope you'll agree that the value of our combined services continues to be high.

Normally in a case like that, the larger company just acquires the smaller company. That is not what happened here. We literally merged our two companies together and both management teams are still not only involved but are busting their asses to improve the value and product for the customers.

So I just saw a Green Plastic video posted in the Stoxpoker videos section. Are we going to continue to get CR content without signing up for their site or is this just a promo thing? If we continue to get CR content, I assume it will be limited unless we sign up for CR? Otherwise what is the point of the discounted signup fee?

I guess, I am also a little perplexed by the perceived benefits to Stoxpoker members. Do we get access to their forums? Do they get fee access to ours? Really just curious about the details.

+EV

Stox,

Will the back-catalogue of Cardrunners small / mid-stakes content be migrating over to Stoxpoker?

Will the Stox "advanced player" content be winging its way in the opposite direction?

If so what is the timing?

Having just sat through an M&A mid-semester today, this is a strategic alliance not a merger imo

Currently the plan is to release 10 CR videos at stoxpoker and 10 stoxpoker videos at CR and stop there - so you are right in that it is limited. Alos no cross foums access right now.

The two biggest initial benefits to the stoxpoker subscriber (in my mind) are as follows:

1. Access to CR at a reduced cost should you choose to signup there.
2. 11 additional stoxpoker coaches (bigger bankroll allows us to recruit these)


Other and future benefits:

periodic CR vids (likely capped at 10 total)
community growth, ability to continue to attract top coaches, better management/infrastructe/backed.

We will do our best to leverage our newfound size into additonal benefits for the stoxpoker subscriber and to that end I hope we can come up with many more things to add to list list as time continues.

Content will only be added to cross site as a bonus and we are currently capping it at 10 videos total.

"advanced player" content will not be migrating from stoxpoker to CR.

Will we be getting to see any of say Jackals SNG cardrunner vids in the promotional 10.
We seem to have been starved of SNG content especially verses other forms of poker and Collin does a manful job but he cant produce video after video all on his own. I see that Duderino is an addition but it has been said that he is doing vids for some time but I have yet to see them.
I did PM admin about the lack of content for us SNG'ers but alas no reply.
So will we as SNG players be getting more content?

How does this affect those who are already members of both sites ?

Why do CR members get 30% more Stox videos than Stox members get CR videos?

I believe it is in the wording of it.

Hello,
i'm a Stoxpoker member from Germany.
Is it possible for me to get the free 24h trail to CardRunners ?
I tried sending an sms to 001 32075 but that didn't work.

I like both sites, but it seems like the customers get a small discount in exchange for signing up for both sites. That is not too beneficial to the customer The addition of more coaches should mean that you are releasing more videos(doubling or tripling the output), not diluting the content of the current videos by making their releases less frequent. It doesnt matter to the customer operationally as long as the benefits are passed on to them, and I fail to see exactly how that will happen(especially if you are keeping separate websites etc.)

Ditto :/

We are releasing more videos. Stoxpoker plans on releasing approximately 51 videos in september. This number does not include the "bonus" cardrunners videos that will be released at stoxpoker.

I'm not sure what could cause this but I assure you we want you to have access to that 24h pass. You can choose to wait until later today or tomorrow and try again or you can email cardrunners support and ask them to help you out.

"merge" is a bit misleading don't you think?

+1... im a paying memeber at both sites... should i be doing anything to get a cheaper combined rate? Or are the rates staying the same for existing members and I dont have to do anything (i.e. just let the recurring payments continue..)?