My friend Gank is hosting a benefit today on Poker Stars for a man who is suffering from some kind of degenerative disease that among other horrible things is eating away his fingers and hands. You'd think this would be an easy $22 tournament to enter and show the poor dude some love but on the poker forums its more complicated.

It seems he might not have the exact disease he claims to have and that the treatment in Mexico he is seeking might be a sham to take advantage of him. The forum posters also point out that there are other more needy people in the world who don't happen to play poker and that charity might be get a better bang for its buck elsewhere.

They make some good valid points. If you were to guess though what percentage of those well-intentioned people who found, for them, very good reasons not to contribute to this obviously suffering fellow human went ahead and actually donated to those other "more worthy" causes they spoke about? If I were guessing I'd say zero.

There's always a good reason to do shitty things, always a good reason to do nothing, and always great reasons for doing the good things you plan on doing later on in life when you are more this and that.

I agree with the posters that it may be a bad idea, in some ways, to contribute to this guy but there is no disagreement that he's in great pain and needs help and I'd rather act on a bad idea to do some good than a good idea to do nothing.

Here's a story from my life on that idea in action:

Hold that thought as my son needs more direct atention from his Daddy and I'm gonna post this thing now because I can't stand having any more Bad Beat Living blogs up on this site and neither can at least one of my readers who just threatened to jump off a bridge if I don't start running better.

Tournie is Today PokerStars $22, half going to carity, look in te Private section at 9pm eastern. 

POKER UPDATE:  Thanks to everyone that wished me luck and told me to play another site.  I played a sat on FTP today and ran HOT(for me).  I took second.  I would have won it all but eads-up I called all-in w K 10 and lost to K 8 then flopped a flush on the last hand and the guy rivered a boat.  BUT I was 2 for 3 with flopped flushes, 1 for 2 on flopped straights and 1 for 2 on flopped sets.  I know that might sound like running not so ot but it's En Fuego for me. 

We all got to start somewhere.

Thanks for reading.