About a week ago, I wrote to the presidential campaigns of Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Dennis Kucinich, Fred Thompson and Ron Paul to find out about their views on poker (see here).  Specifically, I wanted to know whether they play poker and how they feel about the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) preventing banks and other financial institutions from allowing people to use funds to pay for online gambling.  So far I’ve received emails from the campaign teams of Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Huckabee, but haven’t learned anything about their views on my questions.  What then did I learn?

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I just contacted the online campaigns of John Edwards, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney to find out two things: (1) Whether they play poker (I already know that Barack plays - see here); (2) What their views are on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) preventing banks and other financial institutions from allowing people to use funds to pay for online gambling.  I’ll be surprised if anyone gets back to me.  My prediction is that Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul will be most opposed to the Act.  Stay tuned.

These two paintings above can be purchased at Scott Frame and Art

What do poker and presidents have in common?  Presidents Roosevelt  (both), Harding, Eisenhower, Truman, Nixon were all fans of the game (see here).  Now I have just learned that Obama is a poker player (see here).  In fact, he is the founding member of a group of poker players, lawmakers and lobbyists, that would on a regular basis play low stakes poker, smoke cigars and drink beer.   Hmmm….poker, beer, and cigars.  Fortunately for Obama he no longer considers himself Muslim, since poker and beer are haram from an orthodox Islamic point of view.  I’m not sure about the cigars.   

Here are some historical poker tidbits about some of the presidents I mentioned above.

Warren Harding

Warren Harding (the 29th US President) loved the game so much that he had a poker game twice a week and his cabinet was called “the poker cabinet” (see here).  I don’t know whether Harding had any poker skills, but I have suspicions that he wasn’t that good.  According to Michael Gladwell, the author of Blink, “most historians claim that he was one of the worst presidents in American history.”  

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