#627 – Wanna See a REAL World Record?

I heard that one of Full Tilt’s competitors is trying to round up players to set the world record for the largest online poker game. I’m automatically in favor of this: I’ve been reading the Guinness Book of Records since the late-1960s and am a total proponent of anything involving excessive or compulsive behavior.

But it stings me that it’s a competitor. Therefore, if you guys show some support, I’ll go those other guys one better and break a record myself. MYSELF – I don’t need 35,000 people as back-up, either.

A couple months back, I read a fascinating (and, in private ways, infuriating) book by Larry Olmsted, Getting into Guinness. The book is about the history of the Guinness Book, world-record-mania, and his own pair of world records.

I loved the book … for the first half. You have to understand, my brother Bart and I would get the new Guinness Book each year in the early-70s and pore over the pages like it was a holy text. We plotted endlessly about how to break some record and get ourselves in the book. (To this day, I’ll occasionally call Bart on the phone and tell him I just read the latest Guinness Book. “I finally found the record I want to break. Longest  uranium half-life!” Or “Most radioactive isotope!”)

The book was wonderful until Olmsted went after his second record – longest time continuously playing poker. That just killed me. He ended up breaking the record at Foxwoods, playing over three days straight.

I don’t know for sure that I could break his record – or whatever record has replaced it – but at least I could try. I know I’ll never get a shot at Youngest Concert Pianist or Largest Collection of False Teeth, but I’d definitely want to take a shot at this one, under the right circumstances.

Here are the right circumstances:

* Uncle Tilty has to underwrite the whole thing – computers, back-up computers, webcams, assistants, personal chefs, masseuses, etc.

* I want two bonuses if I break the record. First, I want $100k. (The other site – okay, it’s PokerStars – is using a $150k-overlay tournament to get its record, so I’m offering a bargain.) Second, I want a new avatar.

* I need all this set up by Sunday. I want to start in 2008 and finish in 2009.

* A bunch of other demands, which I’ll probably come up with if it turns out I’ve aimed too low.

I’m offering Full Tilt parity here. Stars goes for a record – Tilt goes for one, too. I’ll be waiting to hear from the powers that be.

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