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If I told you the “Polish Open” began yesterday, what image pops into your head? A sausage eating competition? A golf tournament on frozen, barren ground? A giant Catholic confession booth?

Enough suspense. It’s a poker tournament.

Yes, the European Poker Tour has made it to scenic Warsaw for the 2nd year in a row (and I’ve actually been to Warsaw, so when I say it’s scenic…well I’m still joking, but the city’s really not that ugly.)

Anyway, it’s nice to see that people from around the world are gathering for a “sporting” event in Poland. It’s only a matter of time before Roger Goodell and David Stern are dying to showcase their brand of athletic entertainment in the old country.

Hey, look at that. I got through the whole post without making a Holocaust joke. Good for me.

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The fantasy sports craze won’t last forever. At some point people will want something that adds even more importance to meaningless sporting events. And by that I mean people will want something that makes games even more exciting to gamble on.

On that note, I introduce you to Indians farmhand Randy Newsom. The 25 year-old pitcher is offering 4% of all his future major league earnings for $50,000. If you don’t have that kind of money, you can buy a share of that 4% for $20.

Think about how this takes sports gambling to the next level. If you’ve got a piece of Newsom it won’t matter if he comes in with his team down 12 runs. Every single pitch he throws will be like the spinning of a roulette wheel. Fantasy sports can’t provide that kind of excitement.

The sort of thing Newsom is doing is already fairly common in other industries. Right now the most popular form of “selling yourself” is offering a percentage your future earnings to whoever pays your grad school tuition.

Clearly there’s a bright future for sports gambling, fantasy games, stocks, and all that other good stuff. Don’t be surprised if in five or ten years you can bet on any professional athlete’s career the way you can bet on Newsom’s. Maybe college athletes will even begin selling a piece of their booster payments.

(Via Marginal Revolution…again)

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We’ve all spent a night of our lives asleep on the floor of a bathroom, the toilet and sink our only companions. It’s generally something you don’t want to do again, but professional poker player Jay Kwik is about to do it for 30 nights—all in the name of prop betting.

It all started following a Kanye West concert on New Year’s Eve. Kwik, who is known as “Bellagio Jay” for having spent a majority of the past 10 years on the hotel’s premises, mentioned that he believed he could live in a bathroom for 30 days without a problem. Andrew “Good2CU” Robl and Alec “traheho” Torelli quickly jumped all over the errant comment and challenged him to put his money where his mouth is.

The bet will be monitored by video cameras and Kwik must adhere to a strict set of rules. He may not have a computer with him, but he is allowed to have a portable DVD player (porn?) and 400 cell phone minutes (phone sex?) He can open the door for room service (hookers?), but he is not permitted to speak to anyone under normal circumstances (no strippers). Although the exact amount of money at stake is a secret, “reports” say it’s as high as six figures plus the hotel bill.

Some people out there are sure to call Kwik a degenerate gambler. I prefer to call him a modern day Thoreau. Secluding himself from society for 30 days is an extremely difficult task that will surely elevate him to that higher psychological plane where Britney Spears’ day-to-day activities are no longer important.

I hear that Kwik’s time in the bathroom has even impressed Roger Clemens. The controversial Mitchell man once spent 4 straight hours in the bathroom for a massive steroid injecting session, but that was as much as he could take.

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Chris Moneymaker, Gregg Raymer, Daniel Negreanu, and…..Boris Becker?

Yeah that’s right.

With his tennis days behind him the three-time Wimbledon champion has become the newest member of team PokerStars. Becker will begin playing in major European tournaments and he will appear in PokerStars commercials. Overall, he sounds really doggone excited about the whole thing.

“When I was still playing professional tennis, I started learning to play poker casually in-between games because it helped me to improve my concentration,” said Becker: “Now I want to develop my poker skills and challenge myself to become really competitive at the highest levels in poker.”

Becker and poker may sound like a strange match, but let’s face it, at this point the only thing keeping tennis going is heavy gambling on matches fixed by the mob. Well, that and Rafael Nadal’s nubile deltoids. The point is, gambling and tennis go together like Svetlana Kuznetsova and Anna Chakvetadze. Besides, it’s possible that Becker needs some cash, and being paid to sit for long stretches of time is a fine way to earn some. Just ask Jerome James.

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Guess what? Illegal gambling rings can function even without the involvement of Rich Tocchet and Janet Gretzky. For the last 20 months an illegal ring was being run out of the Borgata poker room…until this week.

An illegal sports gambling ring run out of a high-stakes poker room in a posh Atlantic City casino was busted Wednesday and 23 people were charged, including four with alleged mob ties and six casino employees.

Since March 2006, the ring took in $22 million in bets on college and professional football and basketball in the poker room of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, said New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram.

The off-the-books exchanges of cash and casino chips were only unraveled when an informant told authorities what to look for using the casino’s eye-in-the-sky surveillance cameras, Milgram said.

This is exactly the kind of dangerous thing that happens when the government clamps down on internet gambling. Do you see this Congress!? This is all your fault.

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Georgia Bay is a three-year old filly. Last week she entered a race as a 322-1 longshot…and won. A $2 win ticket paid $666.20.

What I want to know is how in the world a horse that was such a longshot was even allowed in the race? And how could she be such a longshot? Was Shaq her jockey? Did she have only three legs? The odds on Georgia Bay winning were about the same as the Dolphins beating the Patriots in New England…twice in a row.  Just think about that for a second.  A goat seems like it would be better than 322-1 to win a horse race.

Anyway, congratulation to Georgia Bay and her owners. You have the best terrible horse on the planet.

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And they’ll never run out of good stuff like this…

–Maria Sharapova will honor New York City with her U.S. Open outfits. (Houston Chronicle)

–Are Baron Davis and Teri Hatcher through? (Larry Brown Sports)

–The Diamondbacks are going to have the grandest scoreboard in all of baseball. (Arizona Republic)

–Outhitting Barry Bonds in high school can help you get free beer. (Deuce of Davenport)

–NBC has an earth shattering marketing slogan for this year’s football season. (Five Tool Tool)

–There’s money to be made on baseball’s postseason awards. (Epic Carnival)

–The Australian Football League has a drug problem and a television network problem. (With Malice)

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With football season just around the corner gamblers everywhere are trying to find an expert on whose advice they can risk their life savings. Sadly, this year the Pickin’ Chicken will not be one of those experts. Earlier this month the brainy bird, who last year correctly picked the winners of high school, college, and pro games 65% of the time, died of natural causes.

The Pickin’ Chicken rose to stardom year when he was plucked of the farm of a Merced Sun-Star reporter and given the job of picking the winners of football games for the newspaper. The chicken made his picks through the complex mathematical method of pecking a piece of paper.

Although the Pickin’ Chicken has now pecked his last piece of paper, his legacy will live on. This year he will be succeeded at the Sun-Star by his son, the Booster Rooster. Gamblers everywhere be keeping their fingers crossed hoping that the Pickin’ Chicken taught his son everything he knows.

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(Every week there are a number of stories slip through the cracks here at ShakedownSports. These are just a few of them.)

Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway will reportedly take a job as his son’s quarterbacks coach at Cherry Creek High School. Elway was actually under contract to coach football at a different Denver public school, but he forced a transfer by threatening to leave and go coach baseball in New York.

Matt Beech, the pitcher who suffered a broken finger when Jose Offerman attacked him with a bat, has been suspended three games for his role in the altercation. Beech is lucky he wasn’t knocked unconscious—if that happened he might have been suspended for a month.

Donald Young, the future of American tennis, finally won his first career ATP match this week. Despite winning the Wimbledon junior Championship this year, the 18 year-old Young had gone 0-11 against the grown men on the ATP Tour. That was until Sunday, when he came from behind to defeat Amer Delic in the first round of the Pilot Pen Classic. Young’s victory means we can officially, beyond any doubt, declare Michelle Wie the most disappointing overhyped loser phenom in all of sports.

Harrah’s has announced that it will partner with AEG to build a 20,000 seat arena in Las Vegas capable of housing an NBA or NHL team. Although there are many concerns about gambling scandals if a professional sports team were to play in Vegas, Harrah’s had assured they will take care of that by putting a small sign at the entrance of the referee locker room that reads “It is illegal for referees to bet on games they are officiating.”

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This stuff is so good you’ll never need to chain it to a rape stand…

–Justin Timberlake is going to be a modern day Hanson brother. (Deuce of Davenport)

–Say goodbye to Rafael Araujo. (Salt Lake Tribune)

–What exactly happened at Deshawn Stevenson’s house? (Bullets Forever)

–Sidney Crosby has a clothing line. (Toronto Star)

–Harrah’s has bad timing. (Winning the Turnover Battle)

–Twelve year-olds are crossing the English Channel. (Denver Post)

–If David Beckham lived 70 million years ago he would have been T-Rex food. (Sons of Sam Malone)

–Tracy McGrady knows what Matt Leinart and Tom Brady are going through. (Epic Carnival)

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