By
grapsfan |
Published
May 30 2007, 01:21 AM
I’ve seen a lot of posts recently where people hold their wins, their cash, their “bling,” etc. over the heads of others to make them feel inferior or unworthy of having an opinion. I read these posts with a grudging level of acceptance, as there are a lot of young and very talented poker players on PocketFives who have never had reason to develop a sense of perspective. Civility is a learned skill, and I don’t expect it from those who are still learning how to be adults. 21st-century culture encourages people to boast about what they have or how much it cost; in previous generations, such behavior was considered boorish and rude. The lack of consideration for others definitely bothers me, as money should never warp one’s view of other individuals and our society. How do I know? Well, let me tell you the story of the most lucrative online tournament win by a P5s member. Notice that I said “online” and didn’t say anything about poker.
In the spring of 2000, I saw some television commercials from a company called GoldPocket, offering weekly Million Dollar “Live Trivia” contests. Good with all things trivial my entire life, I was intrigued by a contest that I could play without leaving my wife and infant son for an evening. I downloaded the software on my 56k modem, and played in the initial game on Sunday night, May 21, 2000. I had no clue whether or not they were actually giving away $1,000,000, for free. That part didn’t seem kosher to me, but the game was fun. “Live Trivia” was architected as a heads-up tournament, with each match being a best-of-3 set of multiple-choice questions. In the case of a tie, a 4th question was asked with the fastest answer being the tiebreaker. I played for about 30 minutes of this one-hour contest before I lost, and then played out the rest of the rounds for fun. I had a blast, and penciled it in as a weekly thing if I was going to be home.
The next morning, I turned on “Good Morning America” while getting ready for work. On the show was the winner of the “Live Trivia” contest, being interviewed by Diane Sawyer. Sitting with them was the founder of GoldPocket, who appeared to be about 17 years old. Scott, the founder, said that they were offering such a large prize to attract as much traffic as possible to their site. It was the only way to beta-test their new EventMatrix technology with a massively-scaled, real-world scenario; as a test engineer in high-traffic applications myself, this made perfect sense to me. The winner, a woman from Missouri, couldn’t say anything more than “I can’t believe it.” Well, I could, and I made sure we were going to be home during Memorial Day weekend.
The next Sunday night, I again sat down at the computer in my loft again and started to play “Live Trivia.” Things ran better than the week before, and I won round after round. My wife called from downstairs, “Have you lost yet?” as I entered the 55-minute mark of the contest. “Uh, no,” I replied, clicking another answer. She ran upstairs, holding our son, as the computer screen changed from the normal question-and-answer window to a message stating, “Congratulations! You are the Live Trivia champion! You have one minute to proceed to the Million Dollar Question.” I read the rules at the bottom as my wife put my son on the floor, so if she fainted, she wouldn’t drop him over the balcony. At this stage of the game, I could quit and walk away with $500,000, or proceed to the final question. If I missed, I’d get $250,000; if I got the answer, $1,000,000. Considering I had only missed one or two questions out of the 55 or 60 I had seen, I felt like this was a good gamble and chose to go ahead.
The final question was “Who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA?” and the five choices hit the screen. One answer was “Lea and Perrins”…nope. One name from the other four choices jumped out at me: Francis Crick. I knew that a British man named Crick had done DNA research with an American whose name was escaping me. If multiple answers included Crick, I might have been screwed; but they didn’t, and I wasn’t. After I answered, I saw another “Congratulations!” screen, with a numeric code and a phone number. I called the number, gave them a call, and after verifying the code, we made plans for me and my family to fly to Boston on the following Tuesday. Monday was Memorial Day. I left messages for my family, my attorney, and my office, and made some last-minute arrangements for our dog.
Upon arrival in Boston, GoldPocket put us up in the Charles Hotel, took us to a fantastic dinner, and pointed out the sites to us on a Duck Boat tour....first-class. I signed some paperwork and posed for pictures with the American Heart Association (the AMA was the recipient of the advertising dollars generated during the beta test). I also got a reasonably-sized novelty check - big enough to be tacky, not so big that I couldn’t get it back on the plane. The check was made out to me in the amount of $1,000,000. The real payout followed several weeks later.
GoldPocket moved on to interactive television, hosting games for TBS (“Dinner and a Movie,” “13 Days of 007”), HBO, and other networks. They were acquired in 2005 by a Swedish company called Tandberg TV, which was recently bought by Ericsson. An article written the week after my win can be found at http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pwwi/is_200006/ai_mark03010767. An interview with Scott Newnam, discussing the early days of the company and the “Live Trivia” contest, can be found at http://www.itvt.com/snewnam03.html.
Is part of this tale a “brag post?” Yeah, I suppose so. But I also wanted to make it clear that I understand how tempting it is to change perspective after you have a big score. My wife and I talked about Cubs’ season tickets, new cars, or dream vacations to Europe or Japan. Instead, we started a retirement account, and she quit her job to be a full-time mom.
Money doesn’t solve life’s problems. It may make them easier to deal with, sure....but at the end of the day, interacting with people and helping each other along is far more important than the size of your bank book. We have a fantastic community here at PocketFives, brought together by love of a game and interest in being the best at it. We can nurture and encourage for the betterment of everyone, or we can tear each other down through flame wars and insults. Money has nothing to do with it. Like any good charitable endeavor, if every P5s member took just 10% of their posts and used them to give and share information, this would be an even better place to be. Just something to think about the next time you open the Poker Discussion forum...