Playing Their Hands on the Hill

Is it government business if consenting adults, in the privacy of their own home, decide to play . . . poker?

Andy Bloch says no. "It's like sex, without the sex," said the professional card player, who came to D.C. with 2000 World Series of Poker Main Event champ Chris "Jesus" Ferguson to lobby against a 2006 law that restricts online poker games. The pros spent two days on Capitol Hill and dropped by Reason magazine Tuesday night to talk about the politics of poker.

Bloch is best known for winning more than $3 million playing Texas Hold 'Em and other forms of poker, but was also a member of the MIT student blackjack team that inspired the new hit movie "21." After earning a bachelor's degree and master's in electrical engineering, he spent six years beating Las Vegas by counting cards. "I've been kicked out of many casinos and arrested many times -- but never beaten up," he told us. He made enough money to pay his way through Harvard Law, passed the bar, but doesn't practice law. Bloch modestly says he makes six figures a year playing cards: "To be honest, I don't work very hard."

The libertarian crowd was, as usual, for anyone who believes in the individual's right to lose money to friends without SWAT teams breaking down the door. "One of the most egregious and absurd things in American culture right now has to do with online poker and home games," said Reason TV editor Nick Gillespie.

So -- who looks good in the presidential election? Bloch likes Barack Obama, who played in a regular low-stakes poker game while in the Illinois state legislature: "I think he'd be the best candidate for poker players."

UPDATE

* Don Geronimo has bowed out earlier than expected. The radio icon (real name: Michael Sorce) was supposed to end his long run on the "Don & Mike Show" May 30; instead, he went on vacation in mid-March . . . and never came back. We're now told he will return just once, on April 11, for a farewell show on WJFK-FM. Partner Mike O'Meara's new show will debut the following Monday. Geronimo has had a hard couple of years since his wife, Freda, was killed in a car accident in 2005.

* Chris Core, unceremoniously dumped from WMAL-AM after 33 years in February, has a new gig. He'll host the POTUS '08 politics channel on XM satellite radio, starting mid-month.

HEY, ISN'T THAT . . . ?

* Cindy McCain shopping for spring accessories at Ann Hand Tuesday. The presumptive GOP nominee's wife (in a silver-gray pantsuit) and daughter Meghan (white T-shirt, black pants, really high heels) dropped by the jeweler's MacArthur Boulevard store with a few friends; they picked up two custom-designed pearl necklaces -- one an oval butterscotch, the other a ruffled white.

* * *

"I'm honored to have Heidi's support and I want to assure her that I never miss an episode of 'The Hills,' especially since the new season started."

-- John McCain to Time.com yesterday in response to the watershed news that MTV reality starlet Heidi Montag has endorsed him. Questions remain: What does Montag get in return for swinging her support to the presumptive GOP nom this early in the race? And does this make frenemies Lauren Conrad and Brody Jenner less likely to back McCain?