The Phoenix, AZ-based ABC affiliate ABC15 has discovered that the casino chips most popularly used in Las Vegas (and many other places) contain seemingly eye-popping amounts of lead. They tested the “clay” casino chips used in major Strip casinos like Caesars Palace, The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, and many more, and they found enormous quantities of lead.

How much lead? “[O]ver half [of the tested chips] maxed-out the swab’s detection limit at 10-percent lead. That’s more than 160-times the lead the EPA legally allows in paint,” says the article.

“Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook looked at our lab results. ‘I am very surprised by the high levels of lead that you found in these poker chips. Very surprised. It’s shocking. I’ve never heard of any other consumer product having this kind of lead content.’” Apparently not even toys from China.

Anyone who’s played with these chips knows that they are all covered with a thin layer of nastiness that coats your hands after a few hours. I thought it was just general railbird funk, but apparently it’s railbird funk combined with a powder chock full of lead. Tasty. For those that like eating in the cardroom, apparently your sandwiches have benefited from a yummy secret ingredient.

While not shocked, I can’t say I’m pleased. I’ve spent thousands of hours around these things, inhaling the dust. There’s no reason they need to be made of such a large quantity of such a toxic material. So be careful. Don’t take the chips home and let your kids or dogs chew on them, don’t grind them up and snort them, and always make sure the filter on your gas mask is clean before coming to the cardroom.

It’s not entirely clear whether this withholding applies to any prize greater than $5,000 or to any prize that exceeds the entry fees by $5,000, but it would seem from Section 2 of the bulletin that it applies only to those prizes that exceed the entry fees by $5,000. So if you enter the main event of the WSOP for $10,000 and place 583rd to win an $11,500 prize, you won’t have withholding because your prize exceeds your entry fee by only $1,500.

It’s also unclear whether the 25 percent is taken from the entire prize or only the amount that exceeds the entry fees, but I’d guess that 25 percent will be withheld from the entire prize, including the entry fees.

Overall, this is a negative development, but for me a not unexpected one. Since poker has become high profile over the past few years, I think the IRS has spent and will spend more time and resources to take its pound of flesh from the game. US tax law is very unfavorable to gamblers, and this new policy is simply an extension of the old unfair policies.

Hat tip to cougarred who first posted this on the message board.

Equity Calculators

Equity calculators are essential tools. They run simulations of all the possible board cards that can come, and they tell you the percentage of the time a certain hand (or range of hands) will win, tie, and lose. The two I use regularly are PokerStove, which is a full-featured client application (i.e., you have to download it and install it on your computer), and NPA Poker Tools, which is a web application I recently wrote. I personally use PokerStove for my writings more than any other poker software tool.

Poker Web Search

#1 Poker Search is a new poker search service that indexes only top-quality poker websites. There’s a lot of great poker information on the web, but sometimes it’s hard to find either because it’s on a site you don’t regularly visit or because the search functions on the sites don’t work well. #1 Poker Search helps you search poker websites and answer your poker questions more quickly and thoroughly.

Hand Converters

PokerHand is a sort of universal hand converter. You can submit a hand history of a hand you played online, and it will convert it into a pretty, human-readable format with card pictures and store it in its database. Then it gives you a permanent URL to your hand that you can post anywhere. So if you want to ask a question about a hand on a forum or blog, you can upload your hand to PokerHand and just post the URL it gives you. FlopTurnRiver also has a hand converter that will produce code for you to copy into forums, blogs, etc. Be careful and make sure you use the right format for the output, however, or your posting will look like a garbled mess of codes instead of a human-readable hand.

Online Hand Databases

SharkScope is a huge database of online tournament results. You can use it to scout out players you may not be familiar with, and it works on many of the major online sites. It tells you vital data about each player, including how many tournaments they’ve played and what their ROI (return on investment) has been. They give you 5 free searches per day, but if you want more, you have to pay.

Heads Up Displays

PokerAce HUD is a heads-up display for online play that uses your PokerTracker database. It’s not free, but it’s a terrific tool nonetheless. Ever wonder how people can play 8 tables at once? PokerAce HUD is one of the tricks these mega-tablers use. It displays PokerTracker data about your opponents next to their names inside the table window, so you see a quick summary of how each player plays right before your eyes. It’s fully configurable, so you can show whatever data you want wherever you want it.

Sit n Go Calculators

Sit n Go Power Tools is not free either, but it is simply essential if you seriously play one table tournaments. Sit-n-gos are very different from any other poker game because they pay so much to second and third place. Your goal isn’t to win the most chips, it’s to win the most money, and often that means trying to survive rather than gambling. Using equity calculators like PokerStove might lead you to the wrong conclusions in sit-n-gos because they will tell you what earns the most chips, not the most money. Sit n Go Power Tools runs the numbers for you, adjusting to the payout structure, and using it will improve your play tremendously.

NOTE: The equity calculators like NPA Tools, PokerStove, and Sit n Go Power Tools are all offline calculators. They aren’t intended to tell you how to play while you play (like the HUDs do), they are for analyzing hands away from the table.

Poker tools are sophisticated these days, and you should take advantage of them. Check out these tools today, and a few months from now you may wonder how you ever played without them.

I really don’t want that to happen. One of the problems with the Feds going after Neteller execs and other payment processors is that they can offer deals to the execs if they open up their financial records to Uncle Sam. Maybe the Neteller execs are willing to go to the felt for gambler’s privacy (I don’t know), but I wouldn’t bet that every person arrested over this will be so high-minded. If the Feds say, “We’ll cut you a nice deal if you show us your books,” I bet they’ll get some takers.

At that point, they can look through the books for high volume players, cross-reference their tax returns, and go after people with gaping discrepancies. The government has said it wouldn’t go after individual gamblers, but I think that’s only because they know they couldn’t make anything stick on gambling charges alone. One of the government’s tried and true methods for going after people they otherwise couldn’t get is by playing the tax evasion card. I really think there’s a good chance it’s coming, and I’d expect to see it come down hard and all at once rather than little by little.

If you play poker online and don’t report your income on your 1040… I really think there’s a decent chance you’ll end up with major problems sometime in the next few years. If you haven’t reported your income and you want to come clean, hire a tax lawyer and don’t say a word about it on any public forums. Please.