PokerStars.com Sponsoring Tournament for Web BloggersTournament Reflects Popularity of Poker and Its Blogs |
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When the Internet first blossomed in the early 1990s, only a few of the enlightened geeks out there realized what kind of animal it would become. They knew that commerce would forever be changed, that communication would be coming lightning-fast. Information, as they said, would be available at everyone's fingertips.
A voice would be given to anyone who wanted to speak out, share knowledge, or make someone laugh.
But nobody could've predicted exactly what it would do for the world of poker or for the people who play the game. Lives have literally changed for many people thanks to online poker and, recreationally, thousands of people play online poker each day.
It can be a lonely existence sitting in front of a computer all day for both writers and poker players, and that could be why so many members of those two isolated groups have started poker blogs.
There are so many bloggers out there that PokerStars.com is holding a freeroll specifically for bloggers this weekend. They didn't skimp on the prize pool, either.
The winner of the bloggers' tournament will receive an all-expenses-paid vacation and entry into the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure, which will take place at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas in January. PokerStars.com will also give away five flat panel LCDs, 10 Xbox 360s, and 20 iPods.
A man known as the Blogfather will be playing in the event. Paradoxically, he's one of the most popular poker bloggers out there, but guards his privacy - and his real name - like a mother bear protecting her cubs. When he writes on his Guinness and Poker blog, he's known as Iggy and thinks the marketing guys at PokerStars.com are very smart for holding this tournament.
"I think it's a brilliant marketing move," Iggy says. "The marketing guys at PokerStars get the blogs. They get it. There's aggregate power there. They're smart to recognize that and capitalize on it."
Word of the tourney spread through the poker blog community like wildfire, which is no surprise since so many of the big blogs, like Iggy's, Tao of Poker, and Love and Casino War, all have long lists of links to poker blogs all over the Internet.
And PokerStars.com requires the blogs to prove that they remained active in the last two months and are legitimate blogs by posting a PokerStars.com graphic and reference number on their sites.
The blogging community, geographically diverse, seems to be tight-knit and supportive of each other. On a recent trip to Europe, Iggy met several of his fellow bloggers, something he said he couldn't have imagined two years ago.
The bloggers also hold private tournaments on several sites, where bloggers and readers square off. They have also held charity tournaments in the past.
Iggy has been a poker blogger for a little more than two years. The former computer programmer is now a full-time Internet poker pro who spends plenty of time writing "uber-posts" on his blog and reaching out to other bloggers through words.
"That's partly why they called me the Blogfather. I'm a big cheerleader," Iggy says. "My blog motto is 'Destroying workplace productivity, one post at a time.'"
But he knows he's doing more than that. He's part of a community where, before the Internet and blogging, there was hardly one, save for the small groups of friends who the rest of the world thought were outsiders for playing poker.
That all has changed. To appreciate this, just look at the number of blogs out there.
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