Email Sent!

Hi All,
Just sent out all the emails. Let me know if you did not receive it and please reply to the email with the info needed as soon as you can so we can get the prizes out to you.
Congrats!
Ryan

Prizes and Email

Email going out tonight (98% chance). Sorry about the delay all!
Ryan

Prize Details

I will be sending out an email hopefully today (at the latest tomorrow) to the winners with prize instructions. Please do not email supportatpokerstars.com. If you have any questions, send it to bloggertournamentatpokerstars.com

The prizes should take about 2 weeks for you to receive. (except the xbox winners since it is not released until the end of November).

Try to reply to the email as fast as you can with the info we need to get your prize out.

Thanks!
Ryan

What Makes a Good Blog Winner!

Well before I get to the winner, let me tell you I got over 50 entries and I enjoyed reading them all since I have started my own blog (hehe). There was some interesting and funny quotes such as:

Sent over by Infant Days of Sleepless Nights
4. Blatantly plagiarise Otis, Dr. Pauly or Iggy. Required once per year.
15. Tell everyone you meet that you have a blog. Have the url and email
address printed on business cards that you can handout.
AND
this by Biggestron Play Poker
Don't say no to anyone that will give you free stuff for putting their banner on your blog. The more flashing banners, the better your site will be. Try to set the banners up so that they flash all out of sequence. If you induce an epileptic seizure in your readers, they are still at your site.
(Editors Note - no flashing banners next year / : )

We also had a couple of interesting ways to submit their entry including a Recipe by Res Ispa Poker, a movie scene that stars Id, Ego, and SuperEgo by The Obituarium, and a help wanted ad by Maudie's Poker Perspective (who I am awarding with our last best blog prize, Congrats!)

But in the end, I went with the winner below. I will post the link to their entry they put on their blog as I believe you should check out the entry and the blog. S.T.B's insight and sincerity were the determining factors in my mind to choose the winner. Congrats to:
Beer City Poker (October 18th blog entry)

Congrats S.T.B and thanks to everyone that took time to send in a entry. No BS, I enjoyed each and every one of them.

Ryan

Referral Winners!

A big thanks to those sites sending bloggers our way and alerting the community. This is also a very nice list of very nice poker blogs. I will contact you later this week about getting you your prize, a very nice PokerStars Fleece Jacket:

1. Tao of Poker
2. Up for Poker
3. The Poker Chronicles
4. 50 Outs
5. DoubleAs

Congrats!

Congrats to easy_wind!

easy_wind from Cambridge, Mass. took it home folks! A big congrats goes out to him. He is on his way to the Bahamas to compete in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure part of the World Poker Tour.

From what I saw, everyone had a great time even those that had an early exit than expected (read comments in the post below). I'm going to point you to our PokerStars blog and let Brad "Otis" Willis take it from here with the wrap up and let the blogs below speak for the tournament themselves. I'm sure they will have plenty to write about. Congrats to all the participants and the winners!

. Here are your final table winners and links to each of their blogs.

1. easy_wind (Cambridge, MA)--2005 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Prize Package
2. simonvlc (Valencia, Spain)--24" Dell Flatscreen LCD monitor
3. Ribs (Warrington, United Kingdom) --24" Dell Flatscreen LCD monitor
4. mattymillne (Edinburgh, United Kingdom) --24" Dell Flatscreen LCD monitor
5. Sunday8pm (Edmunds, United Kingdom) --24" Dell Flatscreen LCD monitor
6. butwin (Cypress, CA) --24" Dell Flatscreen LCD monitor
7. Lucky Poet (Oslo, Norway) --Xbox 360
8. maverick81 (Crowborough, United Kingdom) -- Xbox 360
9. MrAckley (Anchorage, AK) --Xbox 360

Today is the Day!

Well folks, I hope you all will enjoy this tournament. I think there are 2 really cool factors involved here (along with many others!):
1. A tournament where you are playing your peers in the blog world. This one is for braggin' rights fellas!
2. A contest where you can (as much as possible) control your destiny. You see other contests out there that have contests where they will draw a name out of a hat. Here, if ya got the skillz, you got the prize!

I'll get some final numbers for you all after the tourney, but here's one stat here: Over 2,200 registrants with almost 1,500 registered! Great turnout!

Good Luck to you all and check back here after the tourney so I can award the referrers, the what makes a good blog tourney and a wrap-up.

Enjoy the tourney!
Ryan

And the field is set!

Barring a couple of last minute entries due to obscure issues, the field is set: 1,467 bloggers have registered! An outstanding number and it definitely exceeded our expectations. I'm going to post a little bit more in awhile, but make sure you are there tomorrow: Oct.23rd 4pm est (1pm pst) 6am Brisbane, Australia for my buddy Pencil Fiend.
Oh it is on and it has been brought! Gidddddddy up!
Ryan

Couple of Items

The registration has 'officially' ended since we put 12am Friday up as the cutoff. We will still take some registration as they come in until we OFFICIALLY turn off the page which should be this evening.
One important item: If you do register from here on out make sure your registration is perfect! Meaning:
1. The URL for your blog is correct
2. You PokerStars username is perfect including Caps-sensitive
3. The verification code is put on your blog

The tournament is this weekend, October 23rd 2005 4pm est (1pm pst).

May the best blogger win!!!!

Please stay tuned here for post tournament wrap up, the what makes a blog good contest, and one more round of prizes that I will announce a little later.

Good Luck!!!!
Ryan

New Daily Winners!

**Dont forget cutoff for the PokerStars Blogger Championship is this Friday, October 21st at midnight!

Well jury duty finally ended. We lost 14 individuals man hours for 3 days as a country, but it is everyone's right to request a trial by jury...even though it was an open and shut case. I mean not even close to having an arguement. We went back to the room to deliberate after closing arguements and everyone starts discussing the case. Ok, good stuff. FINALLY 10min go by, I stand up and say "I think its great that we are discussing the case, but why dont we take a vote just to see where we stand." Ok, 12 hands raise for guilty...think we could have done that the minute we left the court room.
Anyways! On to the daily winners. Congrats!!!

Whimsy Speaks

From what I have seen, Whimsy Speaks is a "true" blog in the sense of the word, because it's about everything yet nothing in particular. Pretty good writing and just random facts and stories that make for an interesting read.

Poetry Hut

Not sure how much demographically intertwined poker players and poetry readers are here at PokerStars (albeit not just poker players are coming here), but wanted to show a little diversity in the registrants we have AND of course point out a good blog. Very well put together blog focused on one topic, links to news articles, and a cool feature in the blog showing where her visitors are coming from for readers to see.

Richard Herring

Richard Herring is a stand-up comic and this site demonstrates his abilities. It is a website with a very good blog within the site and updated daily.

Congrats to all the Winners!!!

New Daily Winners!!!

***Cutoff for registrants to the PokerStars Blogger Championship is this Friday, Oct 21st midnight est! Top referrers git 'on it!

Ok, so I'm not kidding, I'm in jury duty right now thus the slowdown in winners.
So here are the ones for the past couple of days.
(Editor's Note: If you haven't noticed, I am trying to get a mix of known blogs in the community and others that are not as known. Just wanted to point this out and save my butt since I am going to leave off a good deal of VERY good blogs before this tourney gets underway.)

The Tao of Poker

The myth, the man, the legend of Poker blogging. He's one of those bloggers that you just want new content, new content, new content. Hard to get enough of it. Poker relevant, interesting and a sharp take on whats going on out there.

Wicked Chops Poker

If you haven't been to this blog, check it out. Love the look and the content. This one is very entertaining and full of rumors and/or intrigue. Added bonus, lovely photos of women are very common in this blog.

Matt Matros

What makes this stand out besides the outstanding blog/journal section is the other features on the site including: Essays, Math Corner and Polls.

Allright, those are it for now. Hopefully jury duty will be over tomorrow and I can get back on schedule here.

Congrats to the Winners!!!