Getting Paid to Stay Pure

Back in the 19th century, an author by the name of Steven Vincent Benet wrote a story (that later became a play and then a movie) called The Devil and Daniel Webster. It was about a New Hampshire farmer plagued by misfortune. When his bad luck becomes unbearable after his plowshare shatters on a rock that he could swear was not there the day before, and his plow horse starts coughing sickly, the farmer loses it and vows that for 2 cents, he'd sell his soul to the devil. Sure enough, he suddenly spies two pennies on the ground, and Satan appears. They do a deal and the beleaguered farmer sells his soul in exchange for prosperity.

Lucifer hasn't been seen around much lately, even though "hell" is probably the most frequently uttered word at a poker table, and everyone knows that it was the devil who invented Omaha eight-or-better. However, there have been some equally devilish trades made of late. For example, in his book, The Man With the $100,000 Breasts, Michael Konik describes how one gambler agreed to undergo breast implant surgery in exchange for 100 grand. The deal was that he'd keep them for a year, but the guy seems to have become fond of the boobs, and as far as I know still has them.

And now I've learned of another devilish exchange that most poker players surveyed would not hesitate to make. It seems that PokerStars.com commissioned a national survey that found that more than half of Americans questioned would be willing to give up sex for a year in exchange for winning a big sum of money in a game of online poker!

But not for 2 cents, mind you. No, we've come a long way from the early days. The respondents in this survey, conducted by StrategyOne, an independent public opinion research firm, held out for an average of $2.3 million! The survey also found that 61 percent of adult males would agree to remain chaste for a year as opposed to only 47 percent of women. This proves that men have their priorities right. They realize that poker is more important than sex.

Not surprisingly, men were also more demanding in the amount of money they had to win in order to abstain from sex for a year. The average amount that they demanded in the survey was $2.1 million. Women settled for a trifling $1.9 million. (I'm not sure how the pollsters got an average of $2.3 million when men wanted $2.1 million and women $1.9 million, but we'll let that go. Maybe it's like the figures I make up when I do tournament reporting.)

Anyway, this sounded to me like the making of another TV poker show. The premise would be to have poker players, desperate for a big win, bidding against one another. Just visualize it:

First player: "I'll give up sex for a year for one million dollars." Second player: "I'll give up sex for two years for half a million." Third player: "I'll undergo a vasectomy for a quarter-million." Railbird: "I'll let you neuter me for a $3-$6 buy-in."

You think I'm exaggerating? Make it enough for a $6-$12 game and most railbirds would be happy to be spayed live on the David Letterman show – without anesthetic.

Inspired, I began roughing out a script that I could pitch to the major networks. Some problems immediately came to mind. For example, what if Filthy Willy were a contestant? Giving up sex wouldn't be that great a sacrifice for him, since he hasn't had any for at least 75 years. And a lot of poker players I know aren't exactly promiscuous. They're so repulsive and disreputable-looking that no woman in her right mind (even their wives) would be intimate with them, even if they had the money to pay for sex, which they don't.

OK, so we screen and restrict the contestants to young-hunk players, and to gentlemen of a certain reputation. You know, guys like Warren Beatty and Bill Clinton. Or, if we wanted to get real kinky, Michael Jackson. (I wonder how much Paris Hilton would demand to sleep alone for a year.)

I made the necessary adjustments, and finally came up with a dynamite script for a poker game show. The concept would be that the more money a guy won, the longer he would have to abstain. You know, play hard and stay soft. I took my idea to Fox TV (where else?) and was getting an enthusiastic response until one of the programming execs threw cold water on my proposal.

"Sounds good, boychick," he said. "But how do we know that the winners will keep their word to stay pure for a year?"

"Poker players can be trusted," I tried to say with a straight face.

After the programming execs got up off the floor and wiped away the tears of laughter pouring down their faces, they told me they'd buy my idea if I could come up with some way of guaranteeing abstinence.

Going home, I sat down and began to think. Chastity belts? Nah, any locksmith could get around that. Lie detector tests? That wouldn't work, either. Any good poker player can lie his head off without his heart missing a beat. And then I had an inspiration: Oklahoma Johnny Hale.

No, I don't mean as a contestant. I'm talking about his poker stewards. Several times in his columns, he proposed organizing a team of senior citizen stewards who would travel to casinos to render fair and unbiased decisions in poker tournaments, because casino staffers shouldn't be trusted. For some strange reason, casinos never embraced his idea. Ever since, Hale has been stuck with paying the salaries of a dozen or so senior citizen stewards who have nothing to do all day but sit around reading AARP newsletters. I asked Hale if these stewards might be put to better use monitoring these big cash winners to make sure they didn't slip into any forbidden sex.

Hale rubbed his cheek. "Max," he smiled, "that there's the first good idea you ever hatched in your life." We worked out a plan whereby three stewards would stay on every contestant's tail (no pun intended) in eight-hour shifts. The TV studio would pay their salaries, and in exchange, Hale would get a modest commission of 35 percent, along with four commercials on each show promoting his book.

I knew I had a winner. All I needed was a catchy name for the show. I finally came up with this masterpiece: All In, But Not for a Year.

OK, stay tuned. I'll give you times and dates when the show is set.