![\"Cardplayer.com](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-pokerstrategy.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/poker-strategy<\/a><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve never played, poker is a complex game with a mixture of managing the cards, the betting system and how you interact with other players. So there\u2019s a lot to figure out. cardplayer.com used to address that complexity, with an eye to the experienced player and some help for newbies.<\/p>\n cardplayer.com has a media kit, not updated since 2010, that reinforces the impression:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/media-kit<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s about four news stories a day about poker too, following the professional game from table to table. It goes back years and is still updated daily. There\u2019s a player database, tournament coverage and more. This feels like the kind of content you\u2019d get on a site that was for, and by, people who really cared about the game of poker.<\/p>\n This, on the other hand\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026this is identical <\/em>to the keywords that other Finixio-owned sites ranked for. Before Techopedia violated Google\u2019s guidelines a second, blatant time and was penalized severely, it ranked for identical keywords.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t as weird as Techopedia or ReadWrite ranking for these terms. After all, cardplayer.com is a gambling site, it says so on the tin. But its focus has historically been on poker<\/em>. It doesn\u2019t even seem to have a blackjack section or a page devoted to whist.<\/p>\n In other words, this is classic parasite SEO \u2014 again. cardplayer.com has a good reputation in the industry and the website is so old its terms of use were last updated in 2010. It has domain authority to burn:<\/p>\n https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/website-authority-checker\/?input=cardplayer.com<\/a><\/p>\n But still, why would a poker site rank for crypto casino terms? That doesn\u2019t make much sense. Unless\u2026<\/p>\n The same changes as always<\/p>\n There have been some major changes to the cardplayer.com experience recently.<\/p>\n In the past, it looked slightly different.<\/p>\n https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240928192447\/https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com<\/a><\/p>\n There is something that stands out as instantly different: \u2018Women in Poker\u2019 have mysteriously vanished, to be replaced by \u2018Online Casinos.\u2019 The sidebar on the left of the page doesn\u2019t offer to find you a local room or teach you the game anymore. Instead, it offers to hook you up with high-bonus online poker sites.<\/p>\n What\u2019s happened here?<\/strong><\/p>\n Finixio\/Clickout Media have either bought this site, or paid the owners to run a parasite operation through it.<\/p>\n I tend to believe that they bought the site. The reason for that is that in December 2024, papers were filed with the business registry in Nevada, where Card Player <\/em>and cardplayer.com\u2019s parent company was fittingly headquartered, dissolving the LLC.<\/p>\n https:\/\/esos.nv.gov\/EntitySearch\/BusinessFilingHistoryOnline<\/a><\/p>\n Card Player Media, LLC goes back to 1993, and has had the same agent for the last five years: Barry Schulman.<\/p>\n https:\/\/esos.nv.gov\/EntitySearch\/BusinessFilingHistoryOnline<\/a><\/p>\n So this is a really major change, indicating that the whole business has been shaken up. I\u2019d be willing to bet (on certain platforms) that a new owner shows up soon, registered to the Marshall Islands or somewhere with similarly opaque business registration rules. But for now this is all we know.<\/p>\n You can see the standard insertion of online gambling content into a site that didn\u2019t previously feature it; the continued publishing schedule of somewhat similar content, to keep the site\u2019s credibility high; the sudden, impressive ranking for identical keywords is the clincher.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s their list of \u2018Best Bitcoin Casinos\u2019:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/online-casinos\/best-bitcoin-casinos<\/a><\/p>\n (Note that Instant Casino is itself a Finixio asset<\/a>\u2026)<\/p>\n Their top pick, CoinCasino, does offer online poker:<\/p>\n But that\u2019s just 13 results across the whole site.<\/p>\n It\u2019s much more about baccarat, blackjack and even roulette.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.coincasino.com\/en\/live-casino<\/a><\/p>\n There are pages <\/em>of these.<\/p>\n No license, no oversight, no comeback<\/p>\n Why is cardplayer.com so eager to direct traffic to an online casino site that doesn\u2019t really specialise in poker, and whose main distinguishing feature is that it\u2019s focused on crypto?<\/p>\n Maybe we can get a hint of an answer by looking at the other categories that made it onto their online gambling dropdown?<\/p>\n So you have crypto, fast payouts, offshore, no KYC (Know Your Customer, a financial regulation meant to stop fraud, scams and money-laundering), and Inclave casinos. (Inclave is a password management tool.) This is the shady end of the online gambling pool.<\/p>\n That makes good sense. When we look at cardplayer.com\u2019s ranking keywords in other countries, like the UK:<\/p>\n Or the USA:<\/p>\n We can see the same pattern playing out. These are all overseas, unlicensed or using crypto.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the same story in Australia:<\/p>\n And in the Netherlands:<\/p>\n These are the same search terms that every other site taken over by Finixio\/Clickout ranks (or ranked) for. And just like the other parasite portals operated by Finixio\/Clickout, they popped up from nowhere, and suddenly ranked for terms that are highly competitive and should have taken years to rank for. This site went from not touching on these topics at all, to ranking top three for them, in three months or less. These kinds of results are simply not possible with conventional SEO.<\/p>\n How do we know this is Finixio up to their usual tricks?<\/p>\n Well, we can connect senior writing staff. That\u2019s always a good place to start. (Read on for discussion of some of the other writing staff\u2026) As is so often the case with Finixio assets, proving ownership isn\u2019t easy. The usual MO is to have no official relationships between businesses that are all owned by, or employ, the same handful of people. But they do the same thing with their writing staff. We normally find the same people flitting between one Clickout asset and another, or from Clickout as a journalist to their latest venture as managing editor or executive editor.<\/p>\n For example, here\u2019s cardplayer.com\u2019s new sports betting editor:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/uk\/author\/ciaranmceneaney\/page\/2<\/a><\/p>\n Ciaran is a real person with a lengthy professional past in the gambling space:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/ciaran-mceneaney\/<\/a><\/p>\n And he\u2019s not the only one. Ricky Davies is human too:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/ca\/author\/rickydavies<\/a><\/p>\n His LinkedIn looks like what he says he is, a copywriter with a poker focus.<\/p>\n https:\/\/uk.linkedin.com\/in\/rickydavies<\/a><\/p>\n Where it\u2019s easier, or there\u2019s likely to be scrutiny, Finixio(Clickout fills the ranks with actual humans. What about where it\u2019s mostly low-quality content, and they don\u2019t think anyone will notice? Different story altogether.<\/p>\n The thing is, these are mostly English-language authors and editors. And that makes sense because it\u2019s a primarily English-language site. In fact, until the takeover, it was solely in English.<\/p>\n Now, though, the site does rank for non-English search terms that are location- or language-specific:<\/p>\n Nobody outside Germany is searching for \u2018online casino mindesteinzahlung 5 euro.\u2019 Just like nobody outside Sweden is searching for \u2018casino utan svensk licens,\u2019 for two very obvious reasons: nobody outside Sweden speaks Swedish or cares about Swedish gambling regulations. If you live in Spain, you don\u2019t need to look for casinos that don\u2019t have a Swedish license. That\u2019s what you\u2019ll get by default.<\/p>\n We can take that as a given.<\/p>\n Still, the site ranks for these language-specific keywords.<\/p>\n So one way to know if these are parasite efforts would be to ask, is there a credible, sizable German-language or Swedish-language section of the site?<\/p>\n Look at it this way: if there\u2019s a couple of poker news stories a day, coverage of the German poker scene, and duplicated basic site content like rules and strategy guides, all in German, that looks like they\u2019re trying to cater to a German audience. Nothing wrong with that. Same in Swedish: there\u2019s definitely a Swedish poker scene.There\u2019s a Scandinavian Open with a \u20ac250,000 pot. That\u2019s worth a few lines and a photo to any site that cares about poker, and if it\u2019s trying to build a Swedish audience, why not write it up in Swedish?<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bancocasino.sk\/ba\/en\/live-reports\/scandinavian-poker-open-championship-250000eu-gtd-day-1g<\/a><\/p>\n But, if what we find is just a bunch of casino pages and nothing else <\/em>in that language, then it\u2019s safe to say that ranking for those terms is all the site\u2019s operators care about in that language.<\/p>\n And\u2026<\/p>\n The German portion of the site has 25 pages, including:<\/p>\n All the rest are just about online gambling, exactly mirroring the gambling-related German keywords the site recently started ranking for.<\/p>\n The Swedish-language portion of the site has just 14 pages, all by Malin Sj\u00f6berg (see below for more about her), and apart from the translated homepage and Malin\u2019s author page, every single one is online gambling-related. Most are about casinos. There are no Swedish-language guides or news articles at all<\/em>.<\/p>\n The kicker?<\/p>\n The site\u2019s outlinks to topcasinosites.eu.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the squeeze-page of a site that all Finixio\/Clickout Media sites link to. So far I have found just one of their sites that doesn\u2019t link or redirect there, and only their projects link there.<\/p>\n We can say fairly surely that this is a Finixio\/Clickout Media asset. But what about the people who work on it? We\u2019ve seen before that the Clickout MO involves firing expensive, experienced writing staff \u2014 people who care about what the business used to be, and might make a fuss if you stuff it with spammy ads and links to dodgy gambling websites. Then they replace those staff with inexperienced newcomers, or they simply don\u2019t replace them at all. That seems to be the story at cardplayer.com.<\/p>\n When we started digging into this angle, we found that cardplayer.com had a whole bunch of people who didn\u2019t seem to have LinkedIn profiles. (It\u2019s a rare professional writer who doesn\u2019t have a LinkedIn profile; most are shameless, compulsive self-promoters, because they don\u2019t get work otherwise. So that\u2019s suspicious right out of the gate.)<\/p>\n The two most obvious ways to find someone from a website they have byline on is to either search their name in Google, or do a reverse image search on their profile pic. Remember, most writers are trying <\/em>to get found by as many people as possible. So they use the same profile pic everywhere and put links to their personal website in their bio at every site that will let them. Normally, searching someone\u2019s name will get you their LinkedIn right at the top, and their business website right after.<\/p>\n What you shouldn\u2019t get is\u2026 nothing.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s prolific Swedish-language author Malin Sj\u00f6berg:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/se\/author\/malinsjoberg<\/a><\/p>\n She\u2019s responsible for basically all the site\u2019s \u2018Oh look, I recognize that from Finixio\u2019 content, including \u2018casino without a Swedish license\u2019:<\/p>\n This is a translation \u2014 in Swedish this is \u2018Casino utan svensk licens,\u2019 the #1 gambling-related keyword in Sweden. This is the page that ranks number one in Sweden for that search term, after existing just three months. That\u2019s pretty good content writing. I bet she\u2019s a well-known content marketer. Right?<\/p>\n If she\u2019s contributed 13 of the site\u2019s best performing pages I assume she\u2019s a capable self-marketer. She probably has a LinkedIn page?<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/search\/results\/people\/?keywords=malin%20Sj%C3%B6berg%20cardplayer&origin=SWITCH_SEARCH_VERTICAL&sid=E2y<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Seemingly not.<\/p>\n And a Google search doesn\u2019t turn much up either. There\u2019s a writer called Malin Sj\u00f6berg in Sweden, but\u2026<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bokluckan.se\/tag\/malin-sjoberg\/<\/a><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think this is our Malin Sj\u00f6berg.<\/p>\n Maybe a reverse image search of her profile pic will turn up something?<\/p>\n Apparently not. It\u2019s very <\/em>weird for a prolific and competent freelancer to have no <\/em>online presence, for their profile pic to return nothing like this. That\u2019s a professional shot, are we really going to believe that she didn\u2019t use it anywhere else but cardplayer.com? And that she didn\u2019t have any others that looked sufficiently similar that they\u2019d show up in a search like this?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I guess not.<\/p>\n The odds are good that Malin (this Malin, not the Malin who writes novels) doesn\u2019t exist at all. She\u2019s the least troublesome and expensive kind of employee: a sockpuppet. I doubt she\u2019s the only one. Even some of the authors with <\/em>LinkedIn profiles are fake.<\/p>\n She\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n Sometimes, the links to one author\u2019s page go somewhere completely different. https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/nl\/author\/boydbelshof<\/a> leads to\u2026<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cardplayer.com\/nl\/author\/boydbelshof<\/a><\/p>\n And Frederik\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026doesn\u2019t really exist either.<\/p>\n Having said all of which, some of the staff at cardplayer.com can really tell a story.<\/p>\n Dennis looks in this mugshot like \u2018voted most likely to be a native of This Person Does Not Exist<\/a>.\u2019 Don\u2019t let it fool you, though. Despite being assigned to one of the site\u2019s foreign-language sections as an author, he\u2019s real.<\/p>\n Real enough to have a profile at known Finixio asset ReadWrite:<\/p>\n Unusually, he wasn\u2019t employed as a writer at a Finixio asset and then moved up. According to his LinkedIn profile he\u2019s still head of content at Techopedia:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/dennis-kussel-351a3a254\/<\/a><\/p>\n He\u2019s a trusted, important employee who\u2019s worked at multiple core sites in the Finixio\/Clickout parasite network before this one. There\u2019s no way this isn\u2019t their project.<\/p>\n This is Finixio\u2019s MO. It\u2019s instantly recognizable because it\u2019s so heavily optimized for efficiency and effectiveness. As much as I think what they do is bad, they are genuinely extremely good at doing it. They have taken a general approach, stripped it down, and fine-tuned it to become as fast and powerful as possible. They\u2019re ranking top three for some of the toughest keywords, in just a couple of months. This is hot-rodded parasite SEO, and you know it when you see it.<\/p>\n But we can also see it in other ways. The relationship with staff. The link out to the same gambling website. And the really strong evidence is that high-level staff share roles across Finixio assets. We\u2019ve seen this before, and it\u2019s key to the way Finixio makes it difficult to identify ownership while retaining control.<\/p>\n In the case of cardplayer.com, it means a venerable, once-reliable source of information about poker has become a part of an international web of parasite SEO sites marketing crypto and gambling to retail investors and gamblers alike. I have a post in the works that will show that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg, but meanwhile, Clickout has simply moved on from Techopedia and are up to their old tricks like nothing happened \u2014 and I have to get my poker news somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been watching new players in the parasite SEO space for a while now, to the point where a new player pops up, I kind of know the drill. With that said, a new gambling site suddenly appeared on my radar \u2014 one that didn\u2019t have anything to do with online casinos until literally weeks … Continue reading “Undeterred by the fall of Techopedia, another website acquired and the same thing done to it”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-335","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/335\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-media-kit.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe same keywords as always<\/h3>\n
![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-Canada.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Cardplayer-domain-rating-according-to-ahrefs.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHere\u2019s the front page in October 2024<\/h3>\n
![\"Cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-front-page-october-2024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFor contrast, here\u2019s the same front page in January 2025<\/h3>\n
![\"Cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Cardplayer-front-page-january-2025.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBought and\/or paid for<\/h2>\n
![\"Cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-parent-company-dissolved.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Card](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Card-Player-Media-LLC.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNevertheless, the pattern is still clear.<\/h3>\n
![\"Best](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/best-bitcoin-casinos-on-Cardplayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Coincasino](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/coincasino-poker.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"coincasino](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/coincasino-live-games.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-dropdown.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-UK.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-US.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-Australia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-Netherlands.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWho\u2019s the dealer?<\/h3>\n
![\"cardplayer.com\u2019s](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer.coms-new-sports-betting-editor.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"ciaran](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ciaran-mcenaney-linkedin.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"ricky](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ricky-davies-cardplayer-author.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"ricky](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ricky-davies-linkedin.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe foreign language raid<\/h3>\n
![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-Germany.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-casino-rankings-since-oct-1st-2024-Sweden.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Scandinavian](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Scandinavian-Poker-Open-Championship.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
This is absolutely blatant language-specific parasite SEO.<\/h3>\n
![\"cardplayer](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/cardplayer-linking-to-topcasinosites.eu_.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA ghost ship with a full crew<\/h3>\n
Who you gonna call?<\/h3>\n
![\"Malin](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Malin-Sjoberg-author-at-cardplayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"casino](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/casino-utan-svensk-licens-content-on-cardplayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"malin](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/malin-sjoberg-cardplayer-linkedin.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Malin](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Malin-Sjoberg-bokluckan.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Reverse](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/reverse-image-lookup-on-Malin-Sjoberg.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Malin](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Malin-Sjoberg-ai-generated-picture.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Frederik](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Frederik-de-koning-author-Netherlands-at-Cardplayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Frederik](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Frederik-is-AI-generated.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAnd here\u2019s how we know it\u2019s a Clickout Media operation<\/h2>\n
![\"Dennis](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Dennis-Kussel-author-germany-at-Cardplayer.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"reverse](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/reverse-image-search-on-Dennis.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Dennis](\"http:\/\/recleudo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Dennis-Kussel-head-of-content-of-Techopedia.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYou have to hand it to them<\/h3>\n