I know this isn’t poker related but I couldn’t resist. Besides, after kicking this guy in the junk for his creative idea of getting people to pick up his WSOP main event buy in, I’m on a roll exposing idiots.
Brendan Kelly is going to walk from Louisville, Kentucky to Las Vegas to play one hand of black jack. He estimates that there are 3,250,000 steps between Point A and Point B and is selling each and every one of those steps for $1. Now, on one hand I at least give the guy credit for donating part of the proceeds but on the other hand I give him a swift kick in the testicles for putting the following conditions on his idiocy:
1. He will only begin the trek once he’s collected the full $3,250,000.
2. He will donate $1.25 million to charity. Another $250,000 will be placed on one hand of black jack. Any winnings from the black jack hand (and he doesn’t seem to indicate what he might do with hands like 88 or 92) will “go towards the $1.25 million already given to charity.” Now my read of that is that if he wins $250,000 on his $250,000 bet then “goes towards” indicates that he would still only give $1.25 million to charity while pocketing all the winnings. So let’s do that math here; He collects $3,250,000 and gives away $1.25 million to charity. That’s $2 million left over. The worst case scenario is that he loses and pockets $1.75 million. And based on my read is that if he wins, he keeps $2,250,000. Even if we write off his confusing offer to being an idiot and grant that he meant that the winnings would go to charity on top of the $1.25 million he’s already earmarked, that means he still gets his $2 million and the charity gets $1.5 million.
3. In the remote chance he doesn’t get suckers to pony up $3.25 million, he’ll either refund people their money or donate it to charity . . . minus 10% for expenses.
The thing I’ve noticed about both this publicity stunt and the WSOP guy is that neither one of them seems to have thought any of this through. Their websites are scarce on details. Brendan has no information on things like what he will do if he gets an obvious double-down hand. He also fails to mention what happens if he fails to complete the journey. You can tell neither of these guys is seeing anything but a chance to make money. They’re just hoping to find enough stupid people to make their dreams come true.
How about I start a website where I get people to pay me $1 for every time I expose one of these scammers? Before the WSOP is over I should be a millionaire.