Back in January I logged in to play a little poker on Pokerstars.com. Every time you log in there is a quick pop-up letting you know what's new on the site. Well there was a pop-up talking about a promotion that stars was running that involved purchasing a stuffed monkey for 1,000 FPPs. (For those that don't know. These are Frequent Player Point not unlike VIP clubs at casinos. Points are earned for certain amounts of gameplay which in turn can be turned in for merchandise. To this day I have bought 2 Ipods, 13 Poker books, a Bose Sound Dock, Poker Chips, and a $1,000 Cannon Digital Rebel EOS camera.)
This promotion was that if you bought one of these 1,000 pt monkeys you were to go out across the world and take pictures with it. The most creative photo would win 100,000 FPPs. 50K to second and 25K to third. I had been saving up points for nearly 7 months and was up to 96,000 FPPs. My goal was eventually to get the LG 50" Plasma TV for 150,000. I was getting very close when this promotion came up.
I ordered the monkey and received it in late January. As most of you know I was still not flying due to my snowboarding accident at Big Bear the day after Christmas. The deadline for the photo competition was March 1st so I was running out of time. Fortunately I flew the third week of Feb and took the stuffed Monkey along for a ride with me. I took a couple pictures with the damn thing and then took one last one on the deck outside the jet so they knew it was me that took them.
I honestly forgot about it but saw that they were announcing the winners shortly after I got back from my marathon trip to Key West. Here was how I found out initially.
http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/store/promotions/monkey/
Absolutely ridiculous that I won after 4,800 entries from all over the world. So... now I had almost 200,000 points in my account and it was time to get a badass TV. Well I looked into the TV that was being offered for 150,000 points. Turns out that was a 2007 TV from LG and was only a $1,700 Plasma. I remember seeing that there was a way to get certificates and looked into it. There were $1,000 certificates available for 62,500 FPPs a piece so in the end I got three of them with my points and bought a Samsung 63" Plasma. It just came out on the 1st of June and is being delivered to my pad in DC. Yes I will have to write more on that soon. Very excited to say the least on that topic.
Well to wrap this up.... I was contacted by someone from Pokerstars and he wanted to interview me for an article on the Pokerstars website. I was really happy with how it turned out. Check it out.
http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/2009/maverick-monkey-nets-pilot-100000-fpps-040010.html
