PokerStars.com Blogger's Championship Crowns a WinnerThe Free Tournament for Bloggers Attracted More Than 1,400 Players |
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On Sunday, Oct. 23, PokerStars.com welcomed bloggers from all over the world to play in its inaugural Blogger's Championship, in which more than 1,400 Web loggers faced-off in the free event for a chance to win a $12,000 vacation package, five flat panel LCDs, 10 Xbox 360s, or 20 iPods.
Marc Jacobson, of Boston, outlasted the entire field and will be going to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas in January with his fiancée, where he will play in the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure.
He found out about the Blogger's Championship through (where else?) the blogger grapevine. He says he's an active participant in reading and commenting at poker blogs, and says he has "many interesting poker blogger" listed on his online journal , which is named after an old Grateful Dead song, "Easy Wind," and can be found at LiveJournal.com.
The 29-year-old consultant can't wait to play in the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure, which will be aired as part of the World Poker Tour. Jacobson called the opportunity the chance of a lifetime.
Ryan Patrick, the PokerStars.com tournament director who made the event happen, said he was pleased at the number of people who played on Sunday.
"The tournament was a huge success," Patrick said. "The number definitely exceeded our expectations. Everyone I talked to through emails and at the tables had a great time. Even those that got busted out early."
Jacobsen didn't have to worry about busting out early. He said within the first five hands he held an above-average chip stack, and never looked back.
"I was definitely playing for first," he said, noting the large jump in value between first and second. First place received the $12,000 package. Second through sixth received flat-panel LCD monitors valued at around $2,000.
"I think every pretty sensible player played for first because of that," Jacobson said.
But he never expected to go deep into the large field, partly because some of the people he was playing against were bloggers whom Jacobson trusts for poker advice. A part-time player, he had a goal to make $10,000 playing online this year, and says - this victory aside - it's going to be close.
During the Blogger's Championship, he couldn't do wrong and the cards couldn't do anything except help him.
"I don't think I took a single bad beat at one time," he said.
He managed to grind it to the final table, where he started with the second-least amount of chips, but he was able to extract a whole bunch of chips from an aggressive player when A-J and K-K came in the first two hands. The rest is history.
PokerStars.com decided to hold a tournament specifically for bloggers for a few reasons, said Patrick.
"They are the voice of the Internet. We believe in the strength of bloggers and what they have to say. It really is a new medium in the world as we know it," he said.
The thought of having a thousand angry bloggers on their hands if the tournament didn't run marble-smooth wasn't lost on Patrick either.
"We knew it would be a high risk/high reward outcome. If the tournament did not go smoothly, we would have 1,473 bloggers and their readers left with a bad impression of PokerStars," Patrick said. "If it went well, I believed PokerStars would reap the reward of their voices."
Jacobson is one who would agree the event went smoothly. Mostly an online player, he's excited about playing in the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure, but knows he'll have to have a special session to pull off a victory there.
"I think it's going to be pretty intimidating for me. I'm not used to playing live very often," he said. "At the same time, I don't have much to lose. I'm going to give it my best shot. I'm going to bring my fiancée with me and we're going to make a fun week out of it."
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