Annual prizes revealed - you choose!

Dear all,

I cannot stress enough how sorry I am for us keeping you in the dark about our 2008 grand prizes for the Real Money and Freeroll Rankings. It is now September and it is embarrassing that you've had to wait this long to find out. Rest assured that our 2009 prizes will be revealed in January.

I would also like to thank all of you for your repeated patience in this matter. A very impressive number of you have been playing in our daily freerolls and real money tournaments, and I'm certain it's not only for the daily and monthly prizes. Railbirds.com is proud to have you here!

But I know you're not reading this to find out how much we love you. So without further stalling for time, here are the prizes:

A $10,000 freeroll. This should come to nobody's surprise - after all, it's been on the prizes page for a year. But it's worth reiterating: the top 100 of the Real Money Rankings at the end of the year will be playing a $10,000 freeroll. An exact date for this is yet to be scheduled, as we will want to go through the rankings once we've inserted our final update in early January, but it will likely be held during the last week of January or first week of February. That should give us plenty of time to make sure everything is correct, and it should give the lucky entrants plenty of time to make sure they're available on that date.

As for the very individual top prizes - you decide!

We have two suggestions and as compensation for keeping you waiting for so long, I will be letting you decide which system you prefer. Please let me know which one you prefer by placing a comment on this blog - you have this full week (ending when Sunday turns into Monday EST). Every vote will only be counted once and every user will only have one vote. Voting multiple times will disqualify all of your votes, and if you send your votes through private messages my inbox will become even more swamped than usual, so for the love of God, please don't do that.

So... the two suggestions you are voting for are:

1) The top Real Money Ranking finisher wins a $5,000 WSOP package, second place finisher a $2,500 package and third place finisher a $1,500 package. The top Freeroll Ranking finisher receives a $2,500 package. The money is to be used to play in World Series of Poker tournaments in any combination the winners wish. All four will receive $1,000 extra in spending money as well.

2) The top Real Money Ranking finisher wins a $5,000 WSOP package and the second place finisher a $2,500 package. The top Freeroll Ranking finisher receives a $2,500 package. The money is to be used to play in World Series of Poker tournaments in any combination the winners wish. All three will receive $2,000 extra in spending money as well.

The latter alternative pays out $500 more and makes flights and accomodations for longer trips easier to plan for. However, it also means one less prize. The decision might not be very easy to make, so please think it through before you place your vote.

Cheers,
RailJoe / InfoBird