TruePoker will send me to the WSOP if I can play 120k Hands by 6/30/05

[O Doyle Rules]

Hi All,

First a little background about how this came about. Recently, 2 + 2 poster Stu Pidasso suggested in a post that high volume players should organize into a group and negotiate directly or "collectively bargain" with a poker site for the group's business. (He originally used the word union to describe the group, which he later deemed a poor choice of words and then called the proposed group an association instead) If you would like to go back and read that thread, do a search for Player's Union or search for Stu Pidasso's recent posts.

Instead of the thread developing into a pro and con discussion about the possibility, it quickly degenerated into a bashing of unions and a discussion about how the poker sites really hate the high volume players anyway because they are "leeches" on the system and the poker sites would never negotiate for their business.

The only bright spot that came out of this was the TruePoker CEO came forward and expressed an interest in perhaps attracting high volume players to their site and asked for suggestions by email on how to accomplish this.

I emailed the TruepPoker CEO and offered up some ideas and as an afterthought, I sent him an email outlining a scenario on how he could earn my business individually. I told him I would agree to play a high volume of hands at his poker site during the months of May & June in exchange for a paid entry into the WSOP No Limit Championship, including hotel and travel expense. After some back and forth discussions, he agreed!

Here is how it will work:

I will have to play 120,000 hands at TruePoker by June 30th and in return for this TruePoker will pay the $ 10,000 entry fee into the WSOP No Limit Championship along with hotel and travel costs for myself and my wife. Due to the high number of hands I have to play to win the trip, TruePoker will allow me to play up to 8 tables.

Even with 8 tabling, this will still prove to be a healthy challenge. I am someone who plays alot of online poker, but I still have a full time job to contend with. I calculate it will take me approximately 350 hours of online play to hit the 120,000 hand mark by the June 30th deadline.

Wish me luck (that I don't lose a WSOP entry fee over the next 120,000 hands) and pray that I don't develop carpal tunnel. Seriously, I appreciate the opportunity and am looking forward to be sitting at the WSOP final table! So much for those who said that poker sites would not negotiate or want high volume players at their sites!

The challenge starts now!

(I will be posting updates in regards to my progress)