April 21, 2026 — In an industry already drowning in affiliate-driven “content,” one of poker’s most respected voices has just lit the fuse on what many insiders have suspected for years.

Blaise Bourgeois — WSOP Circuit ring winner, longtime poker journalist, and former ClickOut Media writer — published a no-holds-barred Substack exposé on April 16 detailing exactly how ClickOut Media (operating under the Finixio umbrella) allegedly gutted Card Player Magazine after acquiring it in December 2024.

The Obituary: From Iconic Print Magazine to Newsletter and Bi-Monthly Digital Shell

Card Player, once the gold standard of printed poker journalism found in every card room across America, will no longer exist in physical form. According to Bourgeois’ insider sources, the title was bleeding $750,000 per year with almost no subscriptions before the print run was axed. The new model? A free bi-monthly online magazine and newsletter.

Translation: the brand’s trust and domain authority survive. The expensive, high-quality journalism does not.

Root Cause, Not Symptom: The Classic Affiliate SEO Acquisition Playbook

ClickOut Media is not a media company in any traditional sense. It is a high-volume digital publishing machine built for one purpose: ranking SEO-optimized affiliate pages that funnel players to online casinos and poker rooms — many of which pay generous revenue-share or CPA deals.

Bourgeois calls it exactly what it is: a “parasitic SEO” operation. The strategy is brutally simple and ruthlessly effective:

• Buy legacy brands with strong domain authority and brand equity (Card Player, PokerScout, PokerStrategy, etc.).
• Hire real journalists at attractive salaries to maintain the illusion of editorial credibility on the front end.
• Quietly pivot the entire operation toward hundreds of “Best Online Poker Sites 2026,” “Top Crypto Poker Platforms,” and “Poker Bonus Codes” pages on the back end.
• Use AI to scale output while keeping real writers’ names on content they never touched.

The Bait-and-Switch Bourgeois Lived Through

Bourgeois is refreshingly honest about his own early experience. His first year under ClickOut was “probably the best job experience I’ve ever had.” Then the mask slipped.

Writers were rotated across sites, output quotas skyrocketed, and legitimate editorial work was replaced by high-volume SEO slop. He describes the pressure as particularly acute in poker and iGaming precisely because alternative well-paying jobs in those niches are scarce.

“Companies like ClickOut Media trick and trap legitimate journalists into playing their game… They knew how difficult it was to find a better-paying job elsewhere.”

AI Avatars, Ghost Authorship, and Self-Dealing at CoinPoker

The most damning section of the post concerns AI-generated content published under real (and sometimes non-existent) writer names. Bourgeois claims pages continued to appear under his byline months after he left in August 2025 — content he never wrote or reviewed.

He also highlights ClickOut’s ownership of crypto poker platform CoinPoker. According to his account, the site doubled its rake after acquisition, yet magically sits at the top of affiliate lists on Card Player and sister sites. Pure coincidence, of course.

The Exit: Question Ethics, Get Shown the Door

Bourgeois says he raised concerns internally. Shortly afterward — despite consistent “beyond expectations” reviews and three promotions in 21 months — he was terminated. His exit interview included HR head Anna Grunwerg, whom he identifies as the sister of ClickOut/Finixio founder Adam Grunwerg.

He is now pursuing legal action over wrongful termination and unauthorized use of his name.

ClickOut Media’s Silence Speaks Volumes

As of April 21, 2026, ClickOut Media has issued zero public response to the allegations. No denial of AI content. No explanation for the continued use of former writers’ names. No comment on the CoinPoker self-dealing claims.

In an industry built on optics, that silence is deafening.

The Deeper Industry Disease

This isn’t an isolated scandal. It is the logical endpoint of a poker and iGaming media ecosystem that has been financially dependent on affiliate commissions for over fifteen years. Google rewards volume and authority. Legacy brands provide the latter. AI and exploited journalists provide the former. The result is predictable: journalism becomes theater, and the house always wins.

The real question isn’t whether ClickOut Media did this. The real question is how many other “trusted” poker and casino media brands are already running the exact same backend operation right now.

Players deserve transparency. Writers deserve not to be used as human shields for affiliate funnels. And the poker community deserves better than content farms wearing the corpses of once-great publications.

Read the full post by Blaise Bourgeois here: “How ClickOut Media Killed Card Player Magazine”