Day 2 Tom showed up wearing what looked like a clown wig, but instead of red hair it was completely made of pink feathers.  The hats were working out fine for Tom, as he was among the chip leaders at the end of day 2 (which was 100% because of the hats, and NOT because he is one of the best NLHE players in the world).

Day 3 Tom showed up for play wearing no hat.  Spectators wondered if he had bought out or simply refused to wear anymore dumb hats.  Then, during the second level, I turned around and there was a huge foam bowling pin on Tom’s head.
Day 4 would see the final eighteen play down to the WPT televised final table.  It would also see Tom make the final table of the event with a giant pink flamingo (complete with fully functioning wings) on his head.

Unfortunately, we will never know what Tom would have done had he made the final televised table, as his K-K fell to Cory Carroll’s A-J and Tom exited the tournament in 9th place.

Tom has graciously given his hats to PokerRoad and we’ve decided to auction them off in the name of charity, specifically Guy Laliberte’s ONE DROP charity, which raises money in order to provide clean drinking water to countries that have none. (http://www.onedrop.org/en).  The auction links are up on eBay and can be found below.

- Pink Feather Hat From Day 2
- Autographed Bowling Pin Hat From Day 3
- Giant Pink Flamingo Hat From Day 4

Steve Dannenmann may be on the verge of becoming the “David Sarnoff of Poker” (Google is your friend).  Now, Phil Hellmuth is no Philo Farnsworth, the young man from whom Sarnoff stole the idea, and credit, for the invention of the television, but I think we can all agree that ol’ Phil deserves more credit than Steve Dannenmann for introducing “bad beat insurance” into the poker lexicon.

I’m not saying Hellmuth invented the concept, as bad beat insurance dates back to the Mayans (that’s probably not true, but it’s been around for a long time); however, Dannenmann’s claim to a patent on the concept is ridiculous – as is the way he intends to implement it.

Unlike traditional bad beat insurance, which occurs between individuals, Dannenmann’s idea is for the CASINO to offer insurance for the player or players in a hand.  As the patent is worded, the policy would be based on a number of factors, including:  “the status of the game, that is, how far along in the game the insurance is requested, in terms of how many of the sequence of steps in playing the game have occurred.”

By this logic, Dannenmann’s plan suggests taking into account more than just a players standard equity in a hand, and to include such intangible factors as: the stage of the tournament, the skill level of the players, the structure of the tournament, and the amount winning the certain hand would boost someone’s equity in the tournament.  In my opinion, it is almost impossible to treat the hand both as an independent event and as piece of a much larger sequence of events.  Basically, you can’t ever say for sure how much winning or losing a specific hand would help or hurt someone’s chances in a tournament.

Furthermore, many experts on the issue are saying that an abstract concept like Dannenmann’s bad beat insurance is hard to patent and even harder to enforce a patent on.  Not to mention it would have the potential to monumentally slow down tournaments, give tournament directors and dealers more chances to make mistakes, and, probably the most damaging, give players the luxury of receiving data on their equity in a hand while the hand is in progress.

“The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value” – David Sarnoff