Hacked: The Pokerati Morlock’s lung troubles really take the fun out of smoking for the rest of us.

Scott Chaffin is dying. Now now, before you say WTF? know that I am, too. And so are you, and you, and you. In fact, I challenge you to find one living person on the planet who isn’t “dying” … you can’t do it. Fact of life.

But some of us have to fight a little harder to stave off the grim reaper. And Scott, at age 54, got called into life-battle recently upon learning his nagging smoker’s cough was actually full-blown lung cancer.

Scott is one of the original poker bloggers (c. 2002) — and one of the original bloggers for that matter — who has been a big part of Pokerati since the near-beginning. Horrified by an all-flash direction I was headed with version 2, he took over the controls for all things techy in Pokeratiland more than five years ago. Since then, The Fat Guy has overseen three redesigns, bailed me out on multiple occasions after I broke something big, and has written tens of thousands of lines of code for 146 half-baked Pokerati projects since abandoned. All for no pay, mind you … and added bummer as I learn now that our small-business health plan here at Pokerati may not cover actual sickness.

So if you like Scott and like this site and/or just hate cancer … help keep The Fat Guy around a while longer — he’s still got work to do, dammit! — by donating to his cause via PayPal. (Link takes you to TFG.com, w donate button on top right.) And if you have any complaints about how things run on this site, well dude, c’mon … you know, [hush] cancer.

NOTE: Over 2,000 players have already registered for day 1c, late registration for day 1d is scheduled to reopen at 4:40pm PT today.

Day 1b of the Main Event brought 1,489 players to the Amazon and Pavilion rooms at the Rio for 9 hours of poker action. Phil Gordon, Rafe Furst, Joe Sebok and other dignitaries took part in the pre-game activities to help promote the Bad Beat on Cancer charity. Tuesday’s “shuffle up and deal” command came from Ashley, named “Dealer of the Year” by the WSOP, to get the tournament into action. Some of the notables who didn’t make it through the day included Annette Obrestad, Joe Sebok, Jamie Gold, Erick Lindgren, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Liv Boeree, Justin Bonomo, Mark Seif, Brandon Adams and former November Niners Darus Suharto, Ivan Demidov and Craig Marquis. For a semi-live view of Tuesday’s action, check out Pauly’s day 1b blog.

After 4 1/2 levels of play, 1,017 players will return Saturday afternoon as part of the day 2b field. The day 1b leader is James Danielson of La Plata, Maryland with 201,050 in chips. Some of the notables with a significant amount of chips: Alexander Kostritsyn (131,800), Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (107,100), Gavin Griffin (97,200), Blair Rodman (85,025), Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles (73,475), Brandon Cantu (65,025), Gavin Smith (62,275) Vladimir Shchemelev (53,500), and Phil Laak (40,275). Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker pro Tom Schneider finished the day with 22,075 in chips. The full list of chip counts is now available at wsop.com. For those who made it through day 1a, there is a partial table draw available now here. The day 2b partial table draw is now online here, and on my Twitter when available.

As mentioned above, over 2,000 players have already signed up for day 1c, and today also brings the annual circus of Phil Hellmuth’s grand entrance, scheduled for 1:30. This year, he’s dressing up as an MMA fighter with Wanderlei Silva expected to be part of his entourage and UFC announcer Bruce Buffer introducing him. Daniel Negreanu has jokingly tweeted his own plans about making his entrance today as Rocky Balboa. The rest of the field will make their entrance the usual way, by walking into the Rio without making a spectacle of themselves. See what transpires during the day at wsop.com.

The Prevent Cancer Foundation presented its 2nd Annual “Cancer Champion” award this weekend in Washington DC to two Full Tilt poker pros — Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon.

You be the judge … good poker face on Spencer Bachus (R-AL) as he and his wife congratulate Rafe and Phil for their good great work fighting cancer?

Perhaps one of poker’s staunchest political opponents is softening … Either that or it’s hard to oppose money for cancer, especially at an event sponsored by Pfizer.

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Nicole Rowe, fighting cancer and rallying poker players for a good cause with rebuys.

Pokerati loves charity poker and, of course, healthy breasts … which is why it’s our pleasure to contribute to the grab-bag of prizes for the upcoming Bad Beat on Cancer Poker Challenge, to be held Nov. 12 on PokerStars.

It’s a simple concept — a $10 tourney with rebuys where all the money minus shipping and handling goes to Bad Beat on Cancer … all on behalf of Nicole Rowe and her own fight against the disease. The donated prizes range from a lifetime subscription to DeucesCracked (the 2 Months 2 Million guys’ poker school) to all sorts of other coaching, boot camp, and lifestyle experiences (like drinking with Gavin Smith and Joe Sebok) to signed books to Skullcandy headphones to … for those oh-so-lucky 44th-49th place finishers … Pokerati T-shirts. The top 50 all get something, and that’s what should make this low-stakes fundraiser pretty fun.

Rowe, if you don’t remember, is the player who finished 2nd in a Borgata Ladies event in September, losing to Abraham Korotki, not a lady, who also turned down a chop offer when the two were heads-up and virtually even in chips. “You bastard!” screamed the poker masses, though Rowe herself insists she holds no animosity for her worthy, breastless opponent.

Rowe says she plays poker to escape from her daily battle with cancer, but is also using her winnings to help pay for uncovered expenses related to multiple surgeries and treatments.

Mark your calendars, and click here for a complete list of prizes and other tournament details.

Cool event went down this week in Washington DC — a fundraiser for Put a Bad Beat on Cancer, where a bunch of politicos got together with Team Full Tilt Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, and Rafe Furst to experience the joys of getting beginner poker lessons and playing in a terrible an exciting, luck-friendly blind-structure tournament (with rebuys!) … all for a good cause.

Check out the video coverage from Politico.com:

My observations:

• Had Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) read Joe Navarro, he’d know that we know he’s probably not being truthful when he says he’s happy to be there … unless, of course, that’s just his baseline response.
• Multiple politicians admit to experimenting with poker “when I was in college.”
• Barney Frank (D-MA) says he doesn’t play poker because he doesn’t enjoy it … but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to “repeal the foolish law that makes it illegal for people who want to gamble to gamble over the internet.” (So we can say “illegal” now?)
• Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) gets credited with having the best poker face … and I hope state legislators back home take note that even some gray-haired, vote-conscious conservatives are totally cool with poker.
• Nice closing line by Lederer about politics being just another form of poker.

My hometown favorite is getting lots of publicity in St. Louis. Though he is originally from a small Illinois town across the river from the Lou, Dennis Phillips reps the STL with pride. With Midwest USA newspapers and magazines suddenly interested in poker, Dennis has gotten a lot of media attention, and while he seems to be getting more comfortable with the journalists and TV cameras, humble remains the word of the day.

One of the articles is from the Telegraph and gives a good insight into the WSOP final table chip leader, and the following video from the local NBC sports program shows that Dennis is a good representative for the game of poker. Note that in the video, he discusses the Bad Beat on Cancer patch that he wears on his shirt. Evidently, he is the only one of the nine finalists in the main event who signed up early on to donate 1% of his winnings to the Phil-Gordon-promoted charity. Who says he wouldn’t make for a great 2008 champion?

Click below to see the video interview (sorry, we can’t stop the autoplay).

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