South Africa is the new happening place in the world of poker and Bluff magazine is acknowledging this fact by launching an exclusive South African edition from April 2008.

This magazine will be known as Bluff SA and will be published by the Maverick Publishing Company under license from Bluff Media.

This sudden mass interest in poker in South Africa can be traced to the South African player Raymond Rahme coming third in the 2007 World Series of Poker main event. Incidentally Rahme is still in the fray in the San Remo EPT currently on.

A nation famed for Rugby and Cricket has been suddenly caught hold of by poker. South African players are jumping onto the online poker bandwagon and are soaking in information about the game in an effort to improve their skills and to perhaps replicate or even better Rahme’s feat. Hence the time is ripe for someone informed about poker and already involved in disseminating poker information to make an entry and grab the first mover advantage.

Bluff is doing just that. Bluff SA will be mentoring the growth of Poker in South Africa according to Andrew Carruthers, the Managing Director of the Maverick Publishing Company. The idea is to provide authentic content so that education and entertainment proceed hand in hand. 

Bluff SA will be modeled closely on Bluff. Bluff began operations as a bimonthly magazine in October 2004 and became a monthly in August 2005. In addition to a monthly circulation of more than 200,000 copies in the USA, Bluff has separate editions in Europe, Latin America and Australasia all providing local and international news.

Bluff SA will be the fifth venture. The writers for Bluff constitute the Who’s Who of the poker world and include Mike Caro, Annie Duke and Phil Laak. The magazine constitutes its own player of the year award, which was won by Bill Edler in 2007. In December 2006 the magazine purchased “thepokerdb.com”, which is an online tournament database, making it a formidable entity in the arena of poker media.  

Bluff SA has ambitious plans for disseminating poker related information. They will be advertising on the All Africa Poker Channel collaborating with local media providers to transmit poker related content from the electronic media.

One of the proposed programs is the Bluff Magazine Guide to Winning Poker, in which the magazine’s contributors will provide tips and discuss strategy. Hopefully the efforts of Bluff magazine will lead to more players from South Africa making waves in the international circuit.