Month: August 2005

As of this writing, there are 200 people registered in the $5 tournament on September 12, and 79 people in the $20 tournament for September 14. Math is hard, but I think that means that, within just a few hours, poker players have already contributed $3620, which is actually $7240 once PokerStars matches the contributions.
That.
Is.
Awesome.
But check this out! Due to overwhelming demand, PokerStars has added two more tournaments:

• September 15, 2005 @ 9:30 PM EDT — $50
• September 16, 2005 @ 9:30 PM EDT — $100

I will, of course, have prizes for the player who knocks me out in each of the new tournaments, as well. Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up.

I sat in my living room, and flipped between CNN and The Weather Channel. My mind struggled to process the catastrophic devastation unleashed by Katrina.
Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my face as the magnitude of this disaster set in. I realized that the last time I felt this way was during the tsunami, and 9/11 before that.
“I have to do something,” I thought, “but what?”
During the World Series of Poker, a good friend of several poker bloggers, Charlie Tuttle, died from cancer. A few Charlie’s friends put together a charity tournament at PokerStars, and we raised over $2000 dollars for the hospital that treated him.
“Why not run a small tournament like that?” I thought. “I’m going to do WWdN tournaments anyway, so why not do one to raise money for hurricane relief?”
I walked to my office, and sent an e-mail to one of my friends at PokerStars:

. . . I thought we may have an opportunity to help a lot of people, if we did a PokerStars charity tournament for the Red Cross, to support Hurricane Katrina relief.
I’m thinking a $20 buy-in, with 19.99 going to the Red Cross. We did the same structure with the Charlie Tuttle tournament, so we were basically just playing for bragging rights and good karma, and there were lots of great jokes about the ninety-seven cents in the prize pool.
I know PokerStars is crazy busy with the WCOOP, so if you don’t have time to make this a site-wide thing, would you be able to set it up the same way you set up the Charlie Tuttle Blogger tourney?
I planned on offering up a bust out gift, like an autographed book or something, and maybe I could even make a trophy that would go to the winner. Maybe we could get something from the FPP store for people who make the final table? If PokerStars can’t commit too many resources to this, I’m happy to buy the prizes and stuff myself.

Anne walked into my office. “Can we walk the dogs?” She said.
“In a minute,” I said. I turned around in my chair, and told her about my tournament idea.
“You should ask PokerStars if they’ll match the contributions,” she said.
I thought about this . . . I was already asking for a private tournament to be set up right in the middle of the World Championship of Online Poker, and I was already asking for some prizes from the FPP store . . . “Screw it. I’m already asking for the Moon. I may as well ask for the stars, too.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said, “I’m totally going to do that.”

I told Anne about my idea, and she suggested that PokerStars could match whatever the prize pool is. What do you think?
Talk to you soon,
Wil

We walked the dogs through the balmy August night, and counted our blessings.
The next morning, I got a call from Lee Jones, who is the manager of the poker room at PokerStars, and a good friend of mine.
“I want to talk to you about your tournament idea,” he said. Something in his voice made me feel like I’d been called into the principal’s office.
“Uh-oh,” I thought, “I over-stepped.”
“Okay . . .” I said.
“Do you know about the tsunami relief efforts we did?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
Lee told me how PokerStars ran several charity tournaments, and did some other things that eventually resulted in PokerStars players contributing nearly $200,000 to the Red Cross.
“PokerStars matched their contributions, and we ended up sending four hundred thousand dollars for relief efforts.” He said.
“Oh my god,” I said, “I had no idea.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, “it was pretty incredible.”
He paused a moment, and said, “So. Since you mentioned your idea on your blog, we’ve been getting tons of e-mail from players who want to know what we’re going to do for Katrina . . . ”
“Here it comes. I’m totally busted. Crap.”
“. . . and we’re going to do the same thing.”
“Really!?”
“Really!?”
I could hear a smile in Lee’s voice. “[The President of PokerStars] is totally on board, and it’s going to be huge. We’re going to put it on the Pokerstars blog, and on the client, and on the home page.”
“Holy —” I said, “Wow! We’re going to help so many people!”
“We sure are.”
“I love it that this little idea I had has turned into something so much bigger.” I said.
“About that.” Lee said, “In addition to the twenty dollar freeze out, we’re going to do a five dollar tournament also.”
“What a great idea!” I said. “Do we have dates?”
“Yes,” he said. “We thought about waiting until the WCOOP was over, but the fact is they are going to need relief immediately, and we want to get some money to them as quickly as possible. We’re going to do the five dollar event on Monday, September 12th at 9:30 Eastern.”
I scribbled that down in my book.
“And we’ll do the twenty dollar event on Wednesday, September 14th at the same time.”
“Got it.” I said.
We spoke for a few more minutes, (we are friends, after all) and after I hung up the phone, I did my patented run-around-the-house-hollering move.
Otis has all the tournament details at the PokerStars blog:

. . . coming up on September 12th and 14th, PokerStars.com and Wil Wheaton will host two Hurricane Katrina Relief tournaments with all proceeds going to the American Red Cross. PokerStars will be matching every buy-in 100% and will be offering prizes to the winners. Wil will also be offering autographed copies of one of his books to every member of both final tables.
The event on September 12th will be a $5+$0 No-Limit Hold’em freezeout at 9:30pm.
The event on September 14th will be a $20+$0 No-Limit Hold’em freezeout tournament at 9:30pm
You’ll find the tournaments under the “Tourney” and “Special” tabs.

Until the prizes are finalized, I can’t list exactly what they will be, but they are going to be very cool (so cool, I’ll be playing my “A” game 😉 but I can promise autographed copies of Dancing Barefoot for everyone who makes the final table in both events, as well as an autographed Just A Geek for whomever knocks me out of each tournament, and the ultimate winner of each tournament.
A quick, personal note about PokerStars before I go today: I love this company. I have been involved in several business relationships over the years, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier in my life. I feel less like a sponsored player and more like a member of a family. I asked for an awful lot, with very little notice, and they willingly gave more than I ever hoped for or expected. I’m so proud and grateful to be part of such a classy organization, with such good people.
So please, sign up for PokerStars, and join me in one or both of these tournaments. It’s going to be incredibly fun, and will hopefully make a positive difference in the world.
While I composed this entry, I had CNN on in the background, and the level of suffering and devastation is just overwhelming. The looting, the people who are trapped and dying, the destruction of entire cities . . . it’s suffocating. This is going to get worse, and now, more than ever, good people need to come together and show what we are made of. Whatever you can do, do it. I suggest contributing to:

• Americares.org
• Noah’s Wish
• The American Red Cross

And take a minute today to call the people you love. If any of us needed a reminder of how fragile life is, we just got it.
Final note: South Central Rain just came on iTunes . . . it’s the first time in my life this song that I love has felt chilling.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on three new books:

1. Do You Want Kids With That?, which is a collection of stories about being a stepparent.
2. The Untitled Poker Book, which is my effort to write a Big Deal or Positively Fifth Street or Diary of a Mad Poker Player.
3. The Untitled Work Of Fiction which is still in the larval stage . . . but I get excited whenever I look at my notes.

All of these books will be published by Monolith Press, and will have audio versions just like Just A Geek: Teh Audio Book. I am flirting with releasing electronic versions, as well.
I’m working with my good friend and Dancing Barefoot editor, Andrew, on these projects, and as I go through old blog entries for material and talk with him, it reminds me how much fun I had with that book, and how wonderful the sense of community around WWdN and The Soapbox was back then. I’m thrilled that I earn a little bit of a living from writing now, and I’m continually shocked that so many people read my lame website, but in many ways, I miss the old days when I felt like whatever I wrote here didn’t matter as much. It was so so sad to read the hopeful optimism I had with Just A Geek, but so cool to relive old Star Trek conventions, moments with Anne and the kids, the Avon walk and marathon, and track the ups and downs of the last couple of years in my life.
I sent Andrew a ton of material for Do You Want Kids With That? on Monday (my first official self-imposed deadline, and I hit it! Yes!) and while he reviews it, I can get to work on the other projects when I’m not writing for Games Of Our Lives, which is up to 32 columns! Can you believe that?
I was unsure about working on several projects in parallel. I didn’t think I’d be able to maintain creative focus or momentum on several different projects, but Andrew reminded me that Isaac Asimov always worked on several different projects at once, so if he got blocked on one of them, he could just switch to a different one and keep on working. I’m no Isaac Asimov, but I’m a huge fan and admirer of his work, and if it worked for him . . . well, maybe it will work for me, too.
So as I buckle down and seriously get to work on these new projects, I’m making Yet Another Change to WWdN: I have several friends who write for Weblogs, Inc., and we’ve been talking about me contributing to their poker blog, Card Squad. I know that not everyone who reads WWdN enjoys or cares about poker, so I talked with Jason Calcanis about moving all of my poker content over there: trip reports, SNG reports, observations on the game, reviews, interviews with bloggers and professionals, etc . . . and he thought it was a swell idea.
So. Starting right now, with a few exceptions, I’m moving most of my poker blogging over to Card Squad. I’ll still post major announcements here, but just about everything else will go over there. My Boobies over there is Controversy at the Bike.
Oh! Before I go: while I was writing this, I got e-mail from Dan at PokerStars, and I’ve got the green light on a charity poker tournament to support the Red Cross! More details will come later, just as soon as I get time and date worked out. (That’s one of those major announcements which will probably get cross-posted here and at Card Squad.)

So they really blew it with Just A Geek, and I won’t work with them again . . . but O’Reilly still publishes some incredibly cool stuff, like MAKE magazine, which has a supermegaawesome blog that I read in Bloglines.
A lot of the stuff that MAKE talks about is over my head (making my own crystal radio from scratch is cool in theory, but I’ll take that time and play Destroy All Humans, thank you very much) but occasionally something comes up that I absolutely love and can’t wait to do on my own . . . like the errupting volcano cake!
MAKE is fun to read, even if you’re never going to make (har.) any of the stuff they demonstrate, because on the same day that they link to the volcano cake, they show us how to use old 5″ floppy discs as ultra-cool CD covers, and build a Lego computer.
Check it out, and if you like the blog, pick up the print version — it’s a nice companion to 2600.

I was 0-3 in SNGs until just a few minutes ago . . .

PokerStars Tournament #11907419, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $20.00/$2.00
9 players
Total Prize Pool: $180.00
Tournament started – 2005/08/29 – 19:09:29 (ET)
Dear Wil Wheaton,
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $90.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

I saw that a few WWdN readers dropped in on the game, and gave me some mojo, which included mojo of the Guinness-fueled variety. Thanks for watching, and thanks for the mojo! It was another one of those SNGs where I somehow manage to back into the money, back into heads-up, and turn my 2200 into victory. (That, by the way, is my favorite type! 😉
Some readers have asked me if I could put together a charity tournament to benefit people who have been hit by Katrina. I think it’s a great idea, and I’m working on it.
In the meantime, I’m sure the Red Cross is going to need blood and money, so anyone who can spare one or both should head out and give whatever they can . . . and beware of scam artists who claim to be running fundraisers, and promise to send the money to the Red Cross. Remember what happened post-9/11 and post-tsunami, when evil scammers took advantage of kind-hearted people. You’re much better off contributing to an established organization that you can trust.