Today (Tuesday) was Howard Lederer’s 44th birthday. He was in Washington DC last week, pressing the point, as he has for much of the last year and a half, that poker should not be outlawed, especially not in the privacy of one’s home. He was so busy with all the work connected to that effort that he practically forgot it was his birthday. Consequently, when Suzie gave him a surprise party on Monday night, it really was a surprise.

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Phil Gordon’s birthday is during the summer, so that makes just about everyone who knows him is fair game during the World Series. The pleasure of his company cost me five hundred bucks last summer, but I got away cheap. On the other hand, he and his wife Barbara just moved into a new house and I didn’t get them a housewarming gift so I should probably consider that some sort of offset.

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There are some people who just hate gambling. Those people are a tiny minority but a powerful one. If you take a few people who think something is biblically sinful or they personally suffered because of it or they see an opportunity to benefit politically from publicizing an otherwise unimportant issue, watch out! That’s how political careers are made and ruined, how presidential elections turn, how political power ebbs and flows. If you want to curry favor with religious fundamentalists, especially if you’re not dead-set against a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, you can make a fast set of powerful friends by coming out against the evils of online gambling.

Unless you truly think you’re doing God’s work, however, you need to feel you’re on the correct side of the issue. You have to believe the arguments that online poker’s easy availability caters to problem gamblers and/or creates them. We’ve heard the rhetoric (”click your mouse, lose your house”), though probably few people reading this blog believe it. But SOMEBODY believes it, and based on the state of the law, a lot of people assume it to be true.

Does online poker relate to problem gambling? A recent study in Great Britain provided an unambiguous answer to that question.

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Ty Stewart sees Jeffrey Pollack for the first time at 12:40 PM in the hallway outside the Shadow Bar. Ty quickly updates Jeffrey on the status of everything emphasizing the press conference, which Pollack is running. At 12:43, Stewart dons his jacket and walks fast from the Shadow Bar, pulling me along. We’re going to pick up the bracelet.

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The Bad Beat on Cancer tournament on Tuesday evening was a big success. 295 players entered a $5 tournament with a $5 rake. That’s almost $1,500 for cancer research, education, and prevention, and several players who lasted to the end were asking about how to donate part of their winnings. (www.preventcancer.org is the foundation Furst and Gordon have allied their charitable efforts with, and they take credit card donations online.)

Apparently, Rafe, Phil, and I have taken some heat for all busting on the first hand. I guess the implication is that we “lured” everyone into the tournament with the promise they’d get to play with us – granted, Phil and Rafe are slightly bigger draws than me, plus I play about 13 hours a day – and then we purposely got ourselves eliminated right away.

False. Here are our three sad stories, the saddest being mine.

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In my previous post about my day with Ty Stewart, Harrah’s No. 2 at the WSOP (”Last Hand at the Empire, Part III”), I mentioned an idea under consideration involving the live broadcast of the final table of next year’s WSOP Main Event, with hole cards. I called the idea a “blockbuster” and think it would be great for poker. But it’s a controversial idea and there’s apparently been a lot of discussion about it in forums since my post.

Ty e-mailed me and said “[I] don’t know if I loved seeing that out there.” That was enough for me to revisit the matter and mention some of my discussions with him.

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BBoC “private” tournament at 22:00 EDT tonight. $5 + $5, it is open to all. The password, indicated in the tournament lobby, is “badbeat.” Please be a part to contribute to cancer education, prevention, and treatment. The bounty on me is GIANT: Rafe Furst will pay you $50 if you bust me and I will send you two famous Chicago deep-dish Lou Malnati pizzas by UPS. Rafe has also put a $50 bounty on his own head.

NEW BOUNTY NEWS: George, a founder of AmericanPokerInvitational.com, is offering two bounties on himself (gvacci). His company/site is a recreational poker league. It runs tournaments around the country, always free, in which players can win points and prizes. The national points system qualifies the most successful players for invitational tournaments and additional prizes. It’s all free and it promotes the idea of poker as a social game where you can have fun, learn, improve, and WIN STUFF.

Here’s what gvacci is offering: (1) the highest API finisher wins a seat in the upcoming API Tournament of Champions, and (2) the player who busts him wins a limited-edition American Poker Invitational chip set.

I will append to this posting any additional bounty/bonus information I obtain.

By 11:15 AM, we are in the Shadow Bar, whether the Main Event will conclude. Rupert, the TV producer, immediately delivers two pieces of good news. First, he has spoken with the consultant about U.K. product placement rules. Once Betfair places its logos on the 4 players, it won’t have to remove them if non-Betfair players are eliminated, even if Betfair has more than half the remaining players. Second, the taped interviews with the final-table players are proceeding on schedule.

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The Bad Beat on Cancer tournament is today, October 16 at 22:00 EDT.

Remember, I put a bounty on myself of two Lou Malnati pizza’s, delivered to you promptly by UPS. And if you don’t like pizza – what are you, a communist? who doesn’t like pizza? – Rafe Furst has also put a $50 bounty on me and on himself.

He’s that confident that we’ll run 1 and 2. I’m touched.

If you’re the one who busts me, e-mail me at mrchaotic@aol.com and we’ll work out the pizza details. If you’re some kind of health freak, we can do Italian beef or cheese cake or Carson’s ribs.

I arrive at the Hampshire, a Radisson hotel across Leicester Square from the Empire, at 9:55 AM, five minutes early. The Square, which always seems to be teeming with activity no matter the hour, is quiet and empty on Sunday morning. All of London is seemingly sleeping it off; the London Underground was deserted and I counted 20 WSOP-Europe posters (”The King of Europe will be crowned in Leicester Square”) on my solitary trip up the long escalator to the street. I notice this morning, for the first time, that the Square itself has statues of both William Shakespeare and Charlie Chaplain.

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