To Howard Lederer

Howard. It never occurred to me that you would mind the story being posted. If it had, I, of course, would not have posted it.


I guess the main reason it did not occur to me, was that everybody at the table thought it would be kind of cool to post it and an objection from you did not occur to them either. The second reason it did not occur to me that you would object was because "Jim" had already announced that all but one of the players he asked agreed with him and he was going to unilaterally call the bet off whether you liked it or not. Thus posting it was sort of a freeroll for you. From the early returns it looked like two out of three agreed with you (including two out of two lawyers) leading me to believe that you would have been glad this was put up.


I did not mean to imply I talked to you personally about it. More importantly I did not mean to imply that you had inside information. No way did I mean to do that. In fact the comment you took issue with was made to help rather than hurt your side. Namely that part of your reason for making the bet (i assumed) was that you doubted the Bellagio would not go to great lengths (through comps or whatever) to keep from being embarrassed. Thus a million dollar guarantee could be considered just one of those enticements that you were hoping for.


Given that "Jim" had already told many players about the bet and could have just as easily posted it as me I don't think I did anything wrong by letting my forum readers in on some common knowledge stuff going on at the Bellagio. It would have been wrong if I posted the situation innacurately, thus I hope I have corrected any perceived innaccuracies with this post. Still to be polite, I should have asked you first, and certainly would have had the bet involved real money.