Celebrity sighting and a peculiar conversation

Last night I played at Planet Hollywood. A new player joined our table. He was accompanied by a woman who sat just beside and behind him--nothing too unusual about that. But on his first hand, I noticed that as he bent up the corner of his hole cards, she whispered something in his ear. That's not kosher, but I let it go, assuming it was an anomaly. Then it happened again on the next hand.

I literally had my mouth open to ask the dealer to please be sure to enforce the one-player-to-a-hand rule, when something clicked in my occasionally slow brain. I had seen this guy before, on television.

It was Hal Lubarsky, who became well known when ESPN extensively covered his deep run at the 2007 World Series of Poker main event--the first blind player with such a performance.

I was one second away from making one of the biggest faux pas of my poker career. Just imagine my embarrassment if I had made a complaint, only to have the dealer respond, "He's blind. Is it OK with you if she tells him what his hole cards are?"

He was not using the good luck charm mentioned in this post.

There was initially a slight problem caused by the amount of room he needed. Obviously he needs space for an assistant. But something that doesn't come across on television is how big Hal is--I'm guessing 350 pounds. So between that and the space for a second chair, he effectively occupies the space of two players. Fortunately, PH plays nine-handed at tables big enough to seat ten, so it wasn't difficult for everybody to scoot a bit and make accommodation.

Hal was the tightest player at the table. He played a hand only every three orbits or so. This surprised me, because I had previously read an account that described him as an action player in the local cash games. He bought in for what appeared to be only $75, and by the time I left a couple of hours later, he seemed to have about the same amount. Predictably, with that style of play, when he would put in a bet or raise, opponents would all scamper away.

He was very friendly. He must play at PH quite a bit, because he seemed to know something about all of the dealers' personal lives, and they all knew him.

Maybe half an hour before I left, he moved to the seat right next to mine, so I introduced myself, shook his hand, etc., which hadn't been feasible when he was on the other side of the table. He was wearing a Full Tilt Poker cap. He mentioned that he was a red pro for them now, an announcement I had missed--see here, and here, e.g. (I guess that's not too surprising. You could practically make a full-time job out of reading press releases of new red pro signups, given the rate at which they're announcing them lately. I count 114 red "friends" here.)

I asked whether he needed an assistant to play online, or whether he could magnify the screen enough that he could play without help. It's the former. It made me wonder how feasible it would be to develop software that would read the cards as they appear and announce them audibly. I also wonder how many visually impaired people there are that would play poker online if such a feature were available. (Oddly, the FTP blurb on Hal here says "To play online at Full Tilt Poker, Hal uses a special computer program which announces his hand and details the action, as well as notifying him of any chat messages." I hadn't heard this before, but Hal seemed to deny that this was the case in our conversation, unless I was misunderstanding him.)

OK, so here's the peculiar conversation. Hal asked me if I play online. I told him that I play an occasional tournament for fun, but most of what I do is low-stakes razz cash games and HORSE STTs, just trying to learn those games. He gave me his business card. His is one of about a bajillion companies that provide rakeback to players.

I have from time to time pondered the possibility of opening a second account on Full Tilt and other sites for which rakeback can be culled. A few months ago I even emailed FTP support to ask about it. The problem is that I signed up for essentially all of the sites then available back in 2003 and 2004, before rakeback was available (or at least widely practiced), and they consider it a violation of the terms of service to open a second account, whether to get rakeback or for any other purpose--a conviction which customer service forcefully reiterated to me in a reply email.

Of course I know that millions of people do it anyway, and very few are caught. There is no punishment involved, either--they just close the new account(s) and ship any money back to the original one. For practical purposes, it's only a problem if you use the multiple accounts to cheat, such as by sitting at the same table with yourself or entering a tournament under more than one screen name.

Still, I don't like knowingly breaking the rules, even if everybody else is doing it, and even if it would be profitable, and even if it wouldn't be for any nefarious purpose, and even if the risk and consequences of being caught are small. I haven't ruled it out categorically for the future, but the whole thing bothers me enough that I've decided against it every time I've considered it.

All of which is a long background to tell you this: Hal Lubarsky actively tried to recruit me to create a second FTP account through his company, even after I told him that I wasn't eligible to do so because of already being an FTP member. He reiterated the points I just made (everybody does it, FTP doesn't really care as long as you don't use both accounts simultaneously, etc.). He even suggested that FTP may be quietly changing their policy on this. He said that when one of his new clients came to FTP's attention for having two accounts, they closed the client's old account and let him keep the new one through which he was receiving the rakeback--a reversal of their previous practice.

I asked Hal if he knew what was happening with Eli Elezra, who famously let it slip on national television that he had 17 (I think that was the number) different FTP accounts, while Howard Lederer was at the table with him. That raised eyebrows all over. As far as I know, the site has not taken any public action about this.

Anyway, it seemed mighty strange to me that a sponsored pro for Full Tilt would be actively, knowingly, and flagrantly encouraging players to violate the site's terms of service by setting up second accounts, while the site itself is telling players that they cannot do so. Not shocking, not evil, but just strange.

That's all. Not much of a story, I admit, but it's all I got out of last night's game. Well, that plus about $400....


Addendum

I forgot to tell a stupidity story on myself.

Last week on this season's first episode of "American Idol," Ryan Seacrest looked like a complete goof when he tried to give a high-five to a blind singer. Well, I joined the goof crowd. At one point last night, it was Hal's turn, but he was chatting with somebody and missed the signal that it was his action. I pointed at him in a vain attempt to let him know that we were waiting for him. That usually works.

D'oh!