If there’s one thing I love in this world, it’s that there is a world record for everything. And they’re all in Guinness’s book. Guinness judges have determined the fastest time to pluck a turkey, the most books typed backwards (67 books, by the way), the youngest person to wear a full set of dentures, and the largest gathering of Santa Claus’. I have also proposed some world records that have yet to be confirmed by the nice folks at Guinness, such as Robert Altman’s record for the most consecutive minutes of pointless boredom in film, Barack Obama’s record for most times talking about himself in public, Jack Johnson’s record for the most songs that sound exactly the same, and Paris Hilton’s record for spreading STD’s to the most people.Now there is another record. Popular online casino PokerStars has set a new record for hosting the most players at an internet poker room at the same time. PokerStars’ new record of 307,016 players playing online poker simultaneously on 42,814 tables shatters the record previously held by…PokerStars. Okay, so breaking a record is never as cool when it’s your own record, but it’s still a great achievement. The record-breaking moment occurred on September 6, 2009 and has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, which means it must truly be a record.
I’m not sure how Guinness decides if something is a record, but I imagine it involves them saying, “Well, gosh, that’s a pretty big number. That’s gotta be a record. Have you ever heard of anyone with more than that? No, me neither. Let’s just put that down as a record and we’ll see if anyone challenges it.” I could be wrong. Maybe their judges do a lot of research. In any case, I haven’t seen that many people gathered in one room since the homeowner’s association meeting after I proposed making everyone trade in their grass for AstroTurf. I still think it’s a good idea, just for the record.