On Friday, October 16th, professional poker players and top sports bloggers representing ESPN, Fox Sports, Yahoo, AOL, Sports Illustrated, Gawker Media, Yardbarker, SB Nation, and many more came together for Blogs with Balls, a charity poker shootout at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Poker Lounge. The fundraiser was held in conjunction with the BlogWorld & New Media 2009 Expo in Las Vegas.
Event photos and highlights are available for viewing and download at http://www.gwphotostore.com/cgi-bin/ImageFolio42/imageFolio.cgi?direct=CHARITY_POKER/Blogs_With_Big_Balls&img=0.
The 100-person no-limit hold’em shootout event, sponsored in part by Carbon Poker, boasted ten tables, each represented by sports media companies competing against poker legends, including Annie Duke, Jennifer Harman, Andy Bloch, Jeff Madsen, Bryan Devonshire, Gavin Smith, James Van Alstyne, Jon Friedberg, Karina and Chip Jett, Marco Traniello, “Who’s Your Daddy” CEO Dan Fleyshman, and Brandon Rosen of Post Oak Productions. High profile bloggers included AJ Daulerio of Deadspin, Matt Ufford of With Leather/Warming Glow/KSK, Josh Zerkle from With Leather/KSK, Jamie Mottram, Greg Wyshynski and JE Skeets from Yahoo, Chris Mottram and Spencer Hall from SB Nation, and this year’s Blogs With Balls event coordinator Dan Levy from On the DL Podcast and The Sporting Blog.
Bounty prizes were placed on many of the celebrity players, including a Netbook courtesy of SB Nation. All ten shootout table winners each received a generous prize package, including a one-year subscription to Sports Illustrated Magazine, a bottle of Crown Royal, EA Sports game video discs, and a Carbon Poker hoodie. Adam Best of Fansided.com took home the grand prize package - a bottle of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia, a Carbon Poker 'Last Blogger Standing' prize pack, and a lifetime subscription to Sports Illustrated Magazine.
The event raised awareness and $10,000 for Ante Up for Africa, a charity founded by Duke and award-winning actor Don Cheadle to aid relief and support human rights efforts in Darfur.
About Blogs with Balls
Blogs with Balls is a series of social sports blogger and new media gatherings featuring speakers and panelists specifically focused on sports fans, writers, sites, teams, athletes and companies; and their ability to maximize new media outlets for promotion and advancement. In addition to writers and executives from the largest online sports outlets on the web, speakers at BwB 2.0 at the Blog-World & New Media Expo include former NBA star Jalen Rose, television, web and print personality Kevin Blackistone,
representatives from ESPN and The Sports Illustrated Group, Sacramento Kings VP of Communications Mitch Germann, and many more. For a full list of speakers, panelists and scheduled discussion topics, please visit blogswithballs.com/panels-20. For more
information on Blog World & New Media Expo, please visit http://blogworldexpo.com.
What Happens at BlogsWithBalls in Vegas... from HHR on Vimeo.
