During an online chat this afternoon, Post investigative reporter Gilbert M. Gaul and professional poker player Serge Ravitch explored the intricacies of the online poker industry, and its pitfalls.

Gaul, who wrote a two-part series about online poker called "Inside Bet," and Ravitch, a former New York attorney-turned-poker player, answered several readers' questions, including who owns some of the more popular Internet poker Web sites (it's hard to tell), whether professional poker players pay taxes (they say they do) and whether online poker is safer than live poker (Ravitch says it is).

Among the highlights:

-- Gaul noted that he's heard of multiple investors being behind some Internet poker sites, adding that it's hard for a reporter to identify who's who.

"It creates potential problems for players who think they have been cheated or have had other problems. Let alone who do you sue and where do you sue if you identify a cheater?" he said

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team released its first list of donors today, attempting to fulfill a promise to be the most transparent and ethically "strictest" presidential transition in history.

The list shows that 1,776 donors gave nearly $1.2 million to the transition team as of Nov. 15. Roughly $650,000, or more than half, of that total came from donors who gave the maximum $5,000 limit. Donations from corporations, unions, registered lobbyists, foreign agents, labor unions and political-action committees are prohibited.

Still, several corporate CEOs and titans of industry, including hedge-fund chieftains and law firm partners, made the list.

Top donors include former Commerce Secretary William M. Daley, now of JPMorgan Chase & Co.; Google chief executive Eric Schmidt; movie producer George Lucas Jr.; Choice Hotels chairman Stewart W. Bainum Jr.; UBS chief executive Robert Wolf; Sony chief executive Andrew Lack and Warner Music Group chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Jr..

Daley and Schmidt are both Obama transition team advisers.

Four members of the Sandler family of San Francisco contributed the $5,000 maximum, including Herb and Marion Sandler, the philanthropic couple who used to own the mortgage company Golden West Financial.

The Sandlers, who also finance the investigative reporting news service ProPublica, sold their stake in Golden West to Wachovia in 2006 for $24 billion. Last month, the Justice Department said it was investigating whether Golden West engaged in predatory lending practices, The Associated Press reported.

Herb Sandler told the AP that he and his wife had not been contacted about the probe, but called it "strange and anomalous" given Golden West's "40-year track record for ethics and integrity."

The Sandlers weren't the only family to donate heavily to the Obama transition effort. Four members of the Welters family of McLean, Va., including Anthony Welters, an executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group, donated $5,000 a piece.

People congregate outside the newly-reopened Cafe Leopold, a famous tourist restaurant and the scene of one of the first terrorist attacks last week in Mumbai. (Lefteris Pitarakis / AP)

American officials and security experts say the deadly terrorist attack in Mumbai will undoubtedly cause Western-style hotels and tourist spots around the world to beef up their safeguards.

At least 183 people, including 19 foreigners, were killed in India's most populous city. The foreigners included six Americans and citizens from Britain, France, Australia, Italy, Israel, Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand.

Experts note that terror attacks have increased in recent years against Western-style international hotels, whose "business model demands openness and accessibility for visitors and guests, making total security virtually impossible."

"The threat against diplomatic targets persists, but due to target hardening, the terrorists seek to attack international hotels," said terrorism analyst Rohan Gunaratna, according to the Associated Press. "As Westerners frequent such hotels, they should be considered second embassies."

One of the owners of the two five-star hotels involved in the Mumbai attacks, P.R.S. Oberoi, chairman of the Oberoi Group and hotel, told The Times of India that government officials should improve security at international hot spots, even if it sacrifices hospitality.

"There is a limit to what an individual hotel can do for tightening the security," Oberoi said.

Good morning, and welcome to Monday's Daily Read. Feel free to leave comments and please let us know if we missed anything.

Retracing Attackers Steps » Retracing the steps of the Mumbai attackers offers clues as to how a posse of just 10 gunmen brought India's largest city to its knees in a matter of minutes Wednesday night and kept it terrorized until the last shot was fired Saturday afternoon.— Washington Post

Labor Dept. Accused of Straying from Enforcement » The next labor secretary will be taking charge of an agency widely criticized for walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety. — Washington Post

Report Sounds Alarm Over Bioterror » Seven years after the 2001 anthrax attacks, a congressionally ordered study finds a growing threat of biological terrorism and calls for aggressive defenses on par with those used to prevent a terrorist nuclear detonation. — Washington Post

Clinton to Disclose Donors » Government-watchdog groups on Sunday hailed the news that Bill Clinton will disclose the names of contributors to his presidential library as a big stride toward greater transparency in the dealings of former presidents. — USA Today

Once upon a time in newspapering, it was trendy to dabble in participatory journalism. A reporter would spend time engaging in the activity he or she was writing about. Post investigative reporter Gilbert M. Gaul didn't think that would be a good idea as he gathered information for his two-part series about online poker, Inside Bet, as he says in this installment of Reporter's Notebook:

Gilbert M. Gaul, left, on assignment with Steve Kroft. (Tom Feehy / 60 Minutes)

As a younger reporter I spent a year in Atlantic City covering the casinos shortly after they opened in 1978. There were only three casinos at the time but they had all of the usual glitzy trappings of gambling halls, from row after row of slot machines to smoky back rooms with card tables.

The setting presented an interesting ethical dilemma. Was it appropriate for me to gamble in the industry I was hired to cover? Or would gambling somehow be a conflict? What if I lost a boatload of money and the casino offered to write the loss off in return for favorable coverage?

In all my time in Atlantic City I never gave the casinos a nickel, not because I opposed gambling on moral or philosophical grounds, but because I just didn't get the point. Why risk losing my hard-earned money when I could use it for something I really liked?

All of this came to mind again while reporting the story of the cheating scandals at Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, which cost players millions of dollars. Time and again, players who had been cheated asked me if I was going to write a negative story about Internet poker. When I asked them what they would consider a negative story, they quickly replied: one that might hurt online poker.

Stripped of all emotion, the arguments for and against Internet gambling are as much a moral debate as a legal one. Either you like gambling and the risks that come with it or you don't.

Opponents believe it corrupts the moral foundation of the family by feeding reckless addictions and preying upon human frailities. On the flip side, proponents point out the obvious: We are already a gambling society spending billions each year on casinos, government-operated state lotteries and charitable games. What difference will it make if we take the poker game from the kitchen table to the computer?

One difference is that the Internet offers a cloak of anonymity that gambling publicly doesn't exactly provide. It is possible to lose tens of thousands of dollars before your spouse or children detect the loss. This is one of the arguments offered against online gambling by family values groups.

Those favoring gambling reply: Well sure, but lots of things in life are risky -- drinking alcohol for example -- and we don't ban them completely. And look what happens when we try -- think alcohol again -- it doesn't work. Why not regulate online gambling instead, and pocket the tax revenues?

Some in Congress predict that the United States eventually will embrace online gambling, if for no other reason than we need tax dollars, now more than ever. I don't know about that. What I can say is that I never bet a nickel on Internet poker while reporting this story over several months.

In reporting his two-part series about online poker, Inside Bet, Post writer Gilbert M. Gaul learned that the two big cheating scandals occurred at Web sites owned by the same person -- Joseph Tokwiro Norton, former grand chief of the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe located on a reservation near Montreal.

The Kahnawake became the unlikely hosts for computer servers that handle not only Norton's companies but many of the world's biggest online poker businesses. In this edition of Reporter's Notebook, Gaul explains how this came to be:

At first glance, Joe Norton and the Kahnawake might seem like surprising players to control a large share of the $18 billion Internet gambling business.

Joe Norton arrives at the Kahnawake Peacekeepers station to announce his retirement, June 1, 2004. (Marcos Townsend / The Montreal Gazette)

While in his twenties, Norton worked as an ironworker helping to build the World Trade Center in New York City. At the age of 28 he was elected to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, the governing body for the 8,000-member tribe located minutes from Montreal. Two years later, Norton took over as grand chief, a position he held for more than two decades.

For years, the Kahnawake had relied on cigarette sales and payments from the federal government to get by. Under Norton, they began to look at gambling as a way to lift up the tribe's economic fortunes. In the mid-1990s, Norton promoted an effort to open a land-based casino on the reservation, but the tribe voted it down. A second referendum was also rejected.

Norton and the Kahnawake shifted their focus to Internet gambling. Several factors played to their advantage.

Each week, the editors at The Post's Investigations blog comb through in-depth and investigative reports from news outlets across the country and select notable projects of the week.

This week's top picks:

In what legal experts are calling the country's first cyber-bullying verdict, a Missouri mother has been convicted of impersonating a teenage boy online in a hoax that led to a young girl's suicide.

Lori Drew was convicted of three misdemeanors for violating MySpace's "terms of service," which requires users to submit "truthful and accurate" registration information.The impact of the case in a Los Angeles federal court is significant, experts say, in that it expands the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1986 as a tool against hackers, to include social networking Web sites.

The case has drawn worldwide attention and criticism from online experts, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, which accused the government of misusing the law.

The case was tried by the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Thomas P. O'Brien, after Missouri officials determined that Drew had broken no state laws. MySpace is based in Los Angeles. O'Brien said the verdict yesterday sent an "overwhelming message" to Internet users.