When I mentioned "liability," there is far more at stake than a slip and fall case. Yes, a liability policy would cover the club if someone tripped and broke a leg. The problems do not end there.

With any private promoter, there is no control over who purchases tables. There is a great potential for fraud. There are people that the club has refused to allow at our convention, and I'm not just referring to our recent brass core issues. If there are dealers present at the private show who are not club members, they are not subject to our Code of Ethics or our sanctions or our claims procedure.

If a table is sold to someone who sells a 65 cent Paul-son fantasy chip for $1000 to someone who saw the club logo and thought that the show was a club event or club-sanctioned event, could the club be sued for complicity in perpetrating a fraud? Absolutely! Whether we win or not, you do not want to see the legal bills. This would not be covered by a liability policy. Liability policies cover personal injury, not intentional acts such as fraud.

The bottom line is that there are too many potential pitfalls. The club logo should not be used in any manner in which the public might reasonably infer an endorsement of a private, profit-making enterprise. The chip in question does more than reasonably infer that. It screams "endorsement."

I hope that Allen, whom I know and like, and Jim, whom I do not know, do not take this as anything personal. I just think this sets a terrible precedent for anyone's future chip shows. As Archie and Chuck Tomarchio have mentioned, this is a policy that should be re-thought and reversed.