And the Winners are....(Plus Nside holds an auction!)

[Bullajami]

winner - prize

Highest total points:

1. Nsidestrate - 15 hours of tutoring
2. Taz - a free standard gift
3. Nuke - a free hat

Highest percentage of correct picks:

Thew92 - 3 hours of tutoring from mchilger

Nside had previously decided that he would re-donate the 15 hours of tutoring/coaching to COLOMBIANITOS by putting it up for auction. That's 15 total hours, 3 hours each from an ITH dream team of nsidestrate, Piemaster, toronexti, Tall Paul and osmosis21. (I guess he really is only donating 12 hours, as tutoring himself would have been a bit odd )

I will start the bidding at $50. Subsequent bids can be posted here or by PM to nside. Deadline is 22 July.

The winner of the auction will need to contact each of the coaches and arrange the time and method of the lessons received. For example, if I win;
I want nside to go over my Poker Tracker data for three hours and point out my worst FRLH leaks
Piemaster is going to rail me for 3 hours in a short hand limit holdem game (unless he thinks he has a better way of teaching it than by railing!).
toronexti, Tall Paul are going to rail me in some MTTs to show me where I am missing my opportunities there.
Osmosis21 is going to help me with my NL game.
How much will all that be worth to my bottom line?

Thanks to everyone for participating. The REAL winners of this event were the little ones of Colombia - the Colombianitos. The generosity of the ITH community, the best online poker community, will help make their lives a little better. Yay us!

edited to include a deadline for the auction

[taz115]

Thanks a lot for running this Bull. It was fun and hopefully we raised some meaningful funds for this charity.

I intended to bid aggressively in the auction when nside originally said he would auction off the prize but now that I'm taking a bit of a break I'm not sure.

I'd be a bit disappointed if we couldn't auction off this prize for at least $600 as it would be a steal of a deal at that price in my opinion.

I'll bump the bid to $150 and hope that there are other ITHers out there that want to grab up this prize.

[Bullajami]

[nsidestrate]

I'm not sure how the mechanics of the thing would work, but I'd be willing to consider selling off individual sessions or (better, from my perspective) you guys could pool your funds to outbid Taz and divide the package up as you see fit.

[taz115]

[taz115]

Is there a deadline for bidding? You should keep it open for several days at least imo.

[cybrarian]

I agree - you need to publish a deadline, and stick it in the OP.

[thew92]

[taz115]

I don't mind splitting them to see if we get more interest... I won't be mad if we wipe out my bid and start again.

BRs must be hurting these days... I would have paid $150 for 3 hours of tutoring from nside alone a year ago.

Only thing with splitting them is sometimes the tutors might feel unappreciated if there isn't much interest... which suprisingly there hasn't been much outside of myself, nuke, nside, Bull and thew92.

[nsidestrate]

I'm not going to be around much after Saturday. I guess I'll leave the bidding up for a week, although it doesn't appear that there will be a bidding war.

Deadline is set for next Wednesday at high noon, EDT.

[mchilger]

I'm going to step in here and stop the bidding. I think we can raise more money by breaking up the package into four sets of lessons and I want to make sure it is well-publicized. I will be out of town a couple of days but will set something up on the General Board when I get back later this week.

Thanks Bull for setting up 53offsuit, thanks Nside for the kind donation, and thanks to everyone else who participated for suppoing 53offsuit.

Matthew

[Bullajami]