The world of poker blogging is exploding, and with it, it's almost impossible to keep up with the flood of poker news and views that are being published in the various poker blogs around.

To keep up to date with the poker blogs out there, you have a couple options. You can read one of the "major" poker bloggers who posts links to good entries -- Guinness and Poker is probably the best for this. You can follow Suited Trash, which is endeavoring to keep tabs on which blogs have new content, but isn't always updated.

Or, you can use a newsreader and have instant access to every poker (and other) blog out there without having to click through fifty web pages every day just to check for updates.

I've realized that not many people who read poker blogs actually even know what a newsreader is. A newsreader is a simple application that automatically downloads "newsfeeds" from sources you select (in this case poker blogs), and displays the text from those sites in a single window, organized by entry.

Syndirella

This is a screenshot of Syndirella, the newsreader I recommend for Windows users who want to follow poker blogs. Click for an enlarged view.

Newsreaders allow you to read lots of sites on a daily basis without having to check a ton of websites for new content. They display the posts of the sites in text format without having a different format for every site. At least for me, this makes them much easier and faster to read.

I've tried to put together a "starter kit" for people who want to be able to keep up with poker blogs through a newsreader.

How to get set up with a newsreader

These instructions are for Windows users to get set up with the Syndirella newsreader and subscribe to all the poker blog feeds I'm aware of. The list of current active poker feeds can be found here: Link

To install the Syndirella newsreader, and get started with 50+ poker feeds, follow these instructions. If you don't have Windows, or don't want to install a local newsreader, try Bloglines, a free web-based reader -- you won't be able to configure all the web feeds listed below, but you will be able to configure all the RSS feeds. (Thanks, Mikko!)

1. Download the latest "Microsoft .NET Framework" from the Windows Update site. This is a big download (20 MB), so it may take some time. You may also already have it on your computer.
2. Download and install Syndirella from this link.
3. Open Syndirella. Click "File" > "Import Feed List From" > "OCS..."
4. Type "http://loveandcasinowar.com/synd/pokerfeeds.ocs" and click "Import"
5. Click "Select All" and then click "Import"

You now have a collection of poker blog feeds, congratulations! But you're not done yet. You've only added blogs with "real" RSS feeds. Unfortunately, many good poker blogs do not have a real news feed. However, Syndirella has a great feature that allows these sites to be parsed as if they had a real news feed. I've set up these "web feeds" for the poker blogs I know of. To set these up, you'll need to:

6. Right-click on this link and click "Save As..." and save the file to your local hard drive somewhere.
7. Unzip the contents of this zip file onto your local hard drive.
8. In Syndirella, click "Subscriptions" > "Add Web Feed...". Now click "Import..."
9. Find the place you unzipped the web feeds zip file, and select the first web feed (andybloch.xml) and click "Open".
10. Now click "Add".
11. Repeat steps 8-10 for all the web feeds you unzipped.

You now have a complete list of poker blog feeds! At the top of your feed list in Syndirella you should see a "Welcome" feed. This has some starting tips on how to use Syndirella.

The second feed in your list should be the "Poker Feed News" feed. This feed is what I use to keep you updated on new and changed poker blog feeds, so I recommend you keep it in your Syndirella list to keep up to date on poker blogs.

I hope that you find this helpful. Newsreaders really are the best way to keep up with a larger number of blogs and news sites than you'd ever be able to through a web browser.