[doc43]

If you are playing a WSOP event or any B/M tourney and you get word that your mother had a heart attack, you have the following choices:

1. Keep playing.

2. Get up and forfeit your chips.

3. Get up and risk being blinded out.

4. Have a friend call 911 to get Mom to a hospital.

Leaving the game and asking Chan, Furguson, or anyone else to take the seat is not an option. Only the dregs of society would try to insert Tiger Woods into the final round of a local club golf tournament or A-rod for the final game of the college baseball championship.

How about this: " Dr. Einstein, I'm taking my physics final, but I have to go to the bathroom. Would you mind sitting down and continue the test while I step out for a few minutes?"

It is so sad that some people who play our game don't seem to understand or care about the concept of "one player, one seat, one hand" and that anything else constitutes cheating.

Such people should be ashamed, but I know that they are not. Much of it stems from pure greed and the pervasive attitude that begins in high school that cheating is OK if you don't get caught. Up to 60% of high school students have admitted to cheating in school at least once, which means the figure is probably much higher. Luckily for the rest of us, these folks end up as losers in the long term--losers at poker and losers at life.