Howard Lederer is a DICK

Howard is a fucking sourpuss and a total dick. It runs in his family. His sister Annie is the biggest whiner ever and a total bitch (too many stories to even recount). These two have some weird sense of entitlement. I bet there is some incestuous torrid relationship hiding there as well.

What brought this on? I read over at Res Ipsa Poker about a fun post on 2+2 where Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke tried to get FTP to sponsor him for the Aussie Millions. He got some "no solicitation" response e-mail, but when he scrolled down he found a note from Howard:

"From: Howard Lederer
Sent: Sat 11/3/2007 7:21 PM
To: Robert H. Wolf; Ray Bitar
Cc: Jason Newitt
Subject: RE: Aussie Millions. (KMM4237266I19928L0KM)

The guy's a freak and a very weird dude. He is also quite young. I think we should stay away.

Howard

My new email address is XXXX@XXXX.com. My "tiltware.com" address will not work soon. Please update my contact info accordingly. Thanks."

That is just scandalous. What a douche! I think a formal apology is in order. Seriously, who does something like that?

UPDATE: I guess I didn't actually state why I think Howard is a dick. So here goes. The nature of his e-mail is mean-spirited and even if he does think Fricke is a freak, he shouldn't use that kind of language especially to other employees in the company. Just say, no thanks and move on. But this came back to bite him in the butt and exposed him and his company to ridicule.

Now as far as freaks and other strange (diverse and wonderful characters), let's see who FTP does sponsor and see what freak scale we can come up with (all great players, so don't flame me about that):

Mike "The Mouth" Matusow - Convicted felon with a drug rap sheet and jail time. Not a bad start for the list.
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson - Obviously a nice guy, but likes to make salad by throwing cards at legumes and enjoys badly performed ballroom dancing.
Andy Bloch - Have you seen those hats? Part of a notorious crew of blackjack card counters from MIT.
Gus Hansen - Total misogynist. His behavior at last WSOP has been well documented.
E-Fro - How is he different from Fricke? If he shaved they would look like identical twins, no?
David Grey - Nuff said.
JJ Liu - Huh?
Gavin Smith - I rest my case.

Obviously, I am not calling all of these people freaks. I am actually glad that they are all unique personalities and bring a lot of variety to the tournament circuit and TV poker. Imagine what poker would be like if everyone was an Allen Cunningham or Phil Ivey. Boooooo-ringggggg, and extremely hard for everyone else.

Fricke took second place in an FTP sponsored event and was on the unlucky side of a few coinflips with Gus Hansen. Had he won, would FTP's answer be different?

So Howard can think what he wants. And I am not saying that Fricke is a good fit to FTP. But sending an unnecessary e-mail like that is insulting and rude. And that makes Howard a dick.

Good thing Jimmy has thick skin and can laugh about it all.

UPDATE 2: Nat Arem wrote about this and points out some interesting legal aspects of this idiotic leak. Good stuff as usual, Nat.