Editor’s note: This week, we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the PokerStars Blog with a series of articles looking back on the blog’s history and the people who make it what it has become. In this case, Howard Swains looks into the articles we wrote but never published.
One of my favourite sports stories ran several years ago on an American news site. The reporter travelled to Africa with the bundles of branded clothing discarded at the end of the Super Bowl — the clothing, that is, that is branded with the wrong team winning. The only way to ensure there is enough branded clothing ready for immediate sale after the Super Bowl (or baseball World Series, or soccer World Cup final, etc.) is to print baseball caps, T-shirts, sweatshirts and pennants declaring both finalists as champions. Clothing bearing the “wrong” team (ie, the losers) never sees the light of day in the United States and is instead shipped off to regions where it is greatly valued simply for its utility rather than its design. It means that there are people somewhere in world right now wearing T-shirts celebrating the “Seattle Seahawks – Super Bowl XLIX Champions!” and declaring “Kansas City Royals – World Series Winners 2014!”
At PokerStars Blog, we have seen some epic heads up duels at the end of major poker tournaments — contests than can last for several hours. I’m sure our readers will forgive us if I let you into a secret: sometimes we write our end-of-tournament reports before the winner has actually been decided. It means we’ll sometimes write more than one version of the same report, preparing to scrap the version that turns out to be inaccurate.
Somewhere in my hard drive, therefore, I have reports that declare Jack Salter champion of the 2014 EPT Grand Final Main Event, Justin Young winning the NAPT Bounty Shootout and Mike McDonald winner of the PCA. Indeed, I have three versions of the final table wrap from EPT6 Deauville report, where it was nailed on that McDonald or Teodor Caraba were going to win it, before Jake Cody sneaked in at the death.
As we celebrate ten years of PokerStars Blog, let’s take some time to remember these reports that died on the field of battle and will never to see the light of day. (I mean, if anyone writing reports from the Timbuktu Poker Tour wants them, they’re all yours…)
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Thanks for reading all these years. If you’d like to play in the April 23th 19:00 ET PokerStars Blog 10th Anniversary freeroll, you can find it by searching “Blog” in the PokerStars lobby. The password is fireball.
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