High stakes advertising; what's the deal?

The so-called "World Series of Poker", is running an insert in the July issue of Maxim magazine, (on Canadian newsstands now) and featuring Full Tilt Poker star player and erstwhile sex symbol, Clonie Gowen. She is a member of "Team Full Tilt", a group of accomplished poker players assembled to play each other and all comers online by Fulltiltpoker.com. In turn, the Full Tilt Poker software is developed by a Los Angeles Company TiltWare LLC. It in turn is licensed to Kolyma Corporation, A.V.V. which is regulated and licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in Canada. The Commission regulates and controls gaming and gaming related activities conducted within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake that straddles the Canada-US border near Cornwall. Full Tilt Poker is but one of more than 200 online poker and gambling websites licensed by the native-run commission. Start trolling through the list of sites for the licensees and you'll start to see why some estimates are that about $US 8 billion will change hands in this business by 2008.

There are those who would find gambling advertising as distasteful as gambling itself, but you still have to wonder why, if the target audience of Maxim is attractive to promote this business, in Canada, shouldn't such lucrative advertising be running in Canadian magazines too? Yet you don't see it much. One immediately thinks of Toro. The core demographic of gambling is also the core demographic of magazines; in fact, research is showing that the most avid online gamblers are women over 40. Chatelaine, anyone?