Update: The three winners have been selected. Glad to see people getting creating by, among other things, starting Facebook groups to get more votes. The winners are A Sucker is Born Every Minute…, Techcrunch, Go Back to the Basics, and Trashing TechCrunch. If you are the writer of any of those posts, please email me (see About page) with your contact information and proof of blog ownership – in other words, put your name and email address somewhere on your blog so that I can see it.

Last week we started a contest to give away three free passes to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 15-18, valued at $1,500 each. The rules were simple: dig out the worst post in TechCrunch history and write about why it’s so bad.

We’ve gone through the submissions and have carefully chosen the ten most creative posts (we did not include a couple of submissions where the writers said they weren’t interested in the tickets, and we decided former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick wasn’t eligible to win even though he wrote an excellent post).

We’re conducting a reader poll to determine the top three submissions. This isn’t scientific and it’s possible to game it; however, any obvious mass-gaming will make that submission ineligible to win.

In no particular order, here are the finalists:

• Techcrunch, Go Back to the Basics
• New Direction for TechCrunch
• Delusions of skill and of grandeur
• Trashing TechCrunch
• Techcrunch Trashing (Road to Web 2.0 Expo)
• How to Read TechCrunch
• ZapZap What?
• TechCrunch Contest
• A Sucker is Born Every Minute…
• TechCrunch’s worst post

Here are the ones that just missed the cutoff:

• To All the TechCrunch Haters (too nice)
• TechCrunch Contest Submission (too short)
• Criticism Of Arrington’s Prejudice Against My Religion (good post, but I am currently being accused of being a Google-lover, so missed the mark)
• Adobe Apollo – doesn’t quite cut it.. (too logical, not enough trashing)
• Getting editorial coverage to launch your startup… (zzzzzz – nice trademark infringement though)
• PayPerPost > (TechCrunch * 1000) (the anger just didn’t seem genuine)
• Trash TechCrunch? I’ll Choose the Business Perspective (of course) (too nice)
• Content streams for online TV (too nice)
• Where’s my flying car? (angry his post on TC didn’t result in a buyout. heh.)

Please vote for the post you like the best. The writers of the top three posts will receive a pass to the Web 2.0 Expo. Voting ends in roughly 48 hours – at 6 pm PST on Wednesday, April 11.