I recently ran across a news story (?) that Lady Gaga has been invited to play in the Irish Poker Festival. She was also invited to play in the Asian Poker Tour in Macau. US Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps has been invited twice to play in the Asian Poker Tour.
The only problem is that it’s just an invite. You can invite anyone to anything. I invite President Obama to my next home game. I invite Winston Churchill to guest post from the dead on my blog. Fire up the press releases.
Now, I know the person who invited Phelps and Gaga to the APT event and even though he’s a friend of mine I warned him in Macau I was going to have to bust his balls on this one. See the trend you’re starting? Now every tournament trying to drum up press is going to invite a celebrity to their event because seemingly credible news outlets actually run the story.
I’m unsure what baffles me more; that poker tours/festivals resort to such tactics or the press actually running these PR stunts as news. WL, shame on you and what you’ve started. Now go lash yourself with a wet noodle and get back to writing press releases that I’ll never read :-)
Photo cred to kindofadraag
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Don’t forget that even if they decline the invitation you can still “Feature” them. You can even call the phone call where they decline an “Exclusive Interview”. Or maybe make the event “inspired by” said individual.
In a similar vein you can offer a poker competition with a prize pool “all the way up to $10mil”. If only two people sign up for $100, well, $200 is still “up to $10mil”.
Shhh . . . don’t let WL hear that :-)
YOU LEAVE WL ALONE HE IS A SENSITIVE GUY!