«
»

Donkeybomber Looking to Buy His Way in to TOC

Schneider seeks freeroll backing deal with his fans

by , Mar 24, 2010 | 4:00 pm

Comments (21)

Supposedly some 140,000 ballots came in during the first week of WSOP TOC fan voting. Our eligible pal Tom Schneider’s not in the Top 50 yet, let alone the all-important Top 20. As Harrah’s continues its First Annual Worldwide WSOP.com Email Harvest Tournament of Champions All-Star game, many pros are realizing that they may not get in just on the merits of being tied for 39th among all-time bracelet winners (with dozens of others holding two) and having a twitter account.

So DonkeyBomber is making a desperate unique attempt at getting himself on this uber-elite invite list … check it out … this just showed up in my inbox from everyone’s favorite 2007 Player of the Year:

This year, the World Series of Poker is having a Tournament of Champions. Only 27 players will play and 21 [sic.] of them must be voted in.

Here’s the deal.

You vote for me, Tom Schneider, and ONLY ME, and you will be part of the pool that will split half of what I win. First place pays $500,000. 50% of what I win will be split by people who have voted for me. If I win $500,000, $250,000 will be split by my voters. It’s that simple, and if I get voted in, I will be competing against only 27 players.

The site below is where you vote.

http://www.wsop.com/TOC/TOP50/

They will send you an email with a code in it. That code must be entered when voting.

After you have voted. Send this email to me and the verification email you receive from the WSOP site to tom@bigstackmedia.com and you will be part of the pool. I really would like to play in this tournament and your vote is very important to me. That’s why I’m paying for it.

One more important request. Please email this to any friends or family you have that you think might find it fun to own a piece of someone playing in the WSOP Tournament of Champions.

Please vote and then wish me luck.

Thanks again,

Tom Schneider
2007 WSOP Player of the Year

GL Tom! I will so laugh if you make it to #21 and think you’re in when you’re not. I kid, I kid — I haven’t even voted yet, nor decided how I will. If you win, I’m concerned about the cost of stamps eating away profits.

Click below for the current Top 50 (in random order):

Sam Farha
Hoyt Corkins
Philip Galfond
Howard Lederer
Prahlad Friedman
Scotty Nguyen
Ted Forrest
Kenny Tran
Tom Mcevoy
Jeffrey Lisandro
Humberto Brenes
Chris Ferguson
Phil Ivey
Dan Harrington
T.J. Cloutier
Vitaly Lunkin
Billy Baxter
Erick Lindgren
Annette Obrestad
Daniel Alaei
Peter Eastgate
Erik Seidel
David Williams
Alexandre Gomes
Jamie Gold
Joe Hachem
Dario Minieri
Jennifer Harman
Huck Seed
J.C. Tran
Greg Raymer
Allen Cunningham
Carlos Mortensen
Antonio Esfandiari
Johnny Chan
David Sklansky
David Benyamine
John Juanda
Barry Greenstein
Men Nguyen
Jason Mercier
Daniel Negreanu
Phil Hellmuth
Daniel Schreiber
Layne Flack
Freddy Deeb
Chris Moneymaker
Eli Elezra
Doyle Brunson
Amarillo Slim Preston


Tags: , , , ,

21 Comments to “Donkeybomber Looking to Buy His Way in to TOC ”


  1. Dave     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:15pm

    I find the figure of 140,000 votes cast very hard to believe….I read it somewhere else so I know you have not made it up.

    I seriously can’t believe that many people have voted for something that they get nothing back in return apart from spam email from the WSOP.

    Could be wrong but that figure doesn’t sound right.


  2. DanM     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:28pm

    I heard it thirdhand from someone who would likely have heard it from someone who would directly know. Good enough for a “supposedly”, no? Plus I think they already put out a press release saying something like 100k votes in the first few days. Am I making that up? I swear I saw that somewhere over the transom.


  3. Kevin Mathers     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:32pm

    From WSOP’s Twitter:

    One week in the books and the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions has received 142,693 votes thus far. Vote at http://www.WSOP.com #WSOP


  4. Jess     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:37pm

    My question is does each ballot count as a vote? Or does each person on a ballot count as a vote? If it is the former, then wow. If it is the latter, then 7,000 people casting ballots sounds about right to me.


  5. MattWaldron     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:38pm

    Surely Tom is more deserving — if far less entertaining — than watching Farha. Surely my dream of an epic Farha-Moneymaker rematch and the rebirth of the pokerboom circa 2005 can still come to pass?? What would one half of $125,000 between 20,000 come our to….hmmmmmm.


  6. Dave     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:39pm

    @Kev ‘Cut and Paste’ Mathers 🙂

    From my experience on the web and looking at traffic sources, this figure is still too high. I’d go as far to say it is made up.

    The WSOP site is virtually dead outside the time of the Series. They might have got some traffic from Twitter, a bit from Facebook and maybe some forums but 140,000 sounds like a publicity stunt.


  7. Dave     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:41pm

    I think Jess could be right with the 7,000 figure.


  8. DanM     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:49pm

    Where’s 7,000 coming from? I believe each ballot counts as one ballot, and every registered email address only gets one … and with it they can vote for anywhere from 1 to 20 people.


  9. Katkin     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:54pm

    I voted for Tom the day the ballots were announced. I’m not sure my single ballot makes any difference in the WSOP’s accounting – as screwy as it seems – but I’d enjoy seeing him in the event.


  10. Dave     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:54pm

    No, it looks like they have simply multiplied everybody’s vote by 20.

    Neat trick to boost the figures.

    To quote Kev’s Twitter link: One week in the books and the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions has received 142,693 VOTES

    140,000 votes from 7,000 people.


  11. Kevin Mathers     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:54pm

    Would you consider 10,000 people voting more reasonable? You expect more people to vote for 20 people rather than some sporadic campaigns suggesting you only vote for one. Bluefire Poker, where Phil Galfond makes training videos, started an email campaign yesterday suggesting people only vote for Galfond.


  12. Jess     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:54pm

    I came up with 7,000 assuming that each person’s ballot contains 20 votes for various individuals rather than one ballot counting as a single vote.

    I know some people are just voting for one or two people, but if you take 140,000 votes and divide that number by 20 (i.e. the number of votes on each ballot) you’re only going to have 7,000 individuals or so voting…it makes sense in my head, just not sure if it is translating.


  13. Spaceman     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 4:56pm

    I cast my ballot, complete with a vote for Tom, on Day 1. I’m starting to think I should’ve held out – if Tom’s willing to pay, I bet lots of other bracelet winners will be too!


  14. Dave     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 5:09pm

    I think 10,000 – 15,000 would be a more reasonable figure. I thought people HAD to vote for 20. Just voted myself now and although you have 20 votes you can just nominate a couple.

    I voted for Tom btw….took me a while to find as he is listed as ‘Thomas’


  15. SCOTT DIAMOND     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 5:56pm

    142,000 VOTES DOES NOT SEEM OUT OF THE ORDINARY.ONE HAS TO GO TO THE SITE AND WHEN YOU LOG ON I DO NOT THINK IT MATTERS IF YOU VOTE FOR 1 OR 10 OR ALL 20 THE SITE STILL GETS A HIT.

    THERE MAY BE MORE PEOPLE INTERESTED IN POKER THEN WE THINK. BUT THIS IS AN INTERESTING DEBATE!


  16. foo     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 7:37pm

    Well damn. I would have been more than happy to vote for just Tom but he is about a week late on asking for this. He did get my vote of course.


  17. Ed     says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 7:37pm

    Ooops…forgot to remove the test user from yesterday. NOOB alert!


  18. Short-Stacked Shamus     says:
    March 25th, 2010 at 12:00pm

    Maybe I missed something, but how does Tom know a person voted for him or not?

    I voted already, filling out a ballot with 20 votes (incl. Tom). I rec’d the verification email with the validation code, but no “receipt” or anything showing whom I had voted for afterwards. I can show that I voted (or at least that I got the code to vote), but how do I show who got my vote?


  19. Tom Schneider     says:
    March 26th, 2010 at 11:18am

    Dammit Dan,

    That was a private email. Here you go plastering it all over the internet…oops, well, on Pokerati. I guess I’m safe. It will never get out.


  20. Robert Goldfarb     says:
    March 26th, 2010 at 12:44pm

    The Cake Poker blog wants you to vote for Tom! (well, maybe…you decide for yourself)

    http://cakepoker.com/blog/En/post/Tom-Schneider-Wants-Your-WSOP-Vote-399.aspx

    This is, well I don’t even know what to call it…Tom uses email to get publicity for the TOC vote for himself, Pokerati uses Tom’s email for content (read publicity) for itself, and then Cake Poker uses Pokerati’s content (cause they didn’t get Tom’s email for publicity for itself also.

    I wonder what posting this means about me?


  21. DanM     says:
    March 26th, 2010 at 3:01pm

    See people, this is the type of humor you could have on your TV non-stop if you vote Tom in. I can’t believe you’re not already a lock!