The race for players must be especially tight for online poker rooms these days, considering some of the desperate, absurd marketing schemes cropping up. A quintessential example of this is SaveMyFinger.com, a site that presents a do-or-die predicament involving a “high-stakes" poker game of another kind. SaveMyFinger.com is the brainchild of a person going by the name of Carl Valentine, who purports to be a machine shop worker with a fever for betting. This “fever" led to Valentine's current situation, which could end in the loss of his right pointer finger.

It all started when “Valentine" was challenged by a “friend" who bet that the former could not attract two million visitors to a site of his by April 18th, 2006. The friend, who is supposedly an Internet marketing millionaire, set the bet at one million dollars, a price too rich for a blue collar worker, the likes of whom Valentine is claiming to be. Thus, an alternate arrangement was proposed. If Valentine succeeds in racking up two million visitors, the two will play poker for a prize pot of a million dollars of the marketing mogul's money. If he fails, the two will be playing poker over Valentine's finger. Namely, if he wins, he gets to keep his precious digit, and if he loses, it's off with his phalange! The heads-up poker match will take place at PokerRoom.com, which, as logic would have it, seems to be the true beneficiary of this stunt.

What will those marketing execs think of next? Here are a couple of ideas I've come up with in the past 2.25 minutes:

Battle of the Species: Chimps against Orangutans- Which primate knows how to hold'em?
Poker in Space: The lack of gravity should make for an interesting twist.
Spouse-Swap Hold'em: Players compete against each other using their spouses as collateral.

Source:  Poker777 Staff

Friday, 16 December 2005