Home / Poker News January 2010 / The poker industry rallies for Haiti
The poker industry rallies for Haiti
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2010-01-15 15:13
I suppose I needn’t tell you about the earthquake in Haiti that possibly made tens of thousands of victims a few days ago, in what is slowly but surely shaping up as one of the biggest natural disasters of modern times. The extent of the humanitarian drama is only matched by the unprecedented mobilization that aid agencies and various other organizations have commenced. It seems like everyone is pitching in one way or another these days, as the poker industry decided to land a helping hand too.
Several
online poker sites have come up with ways to raise money for various charities linked to the Haiti disaster.
As one of the biggest online poker sites, Full Tilt Poker heads the effort through the “Aid for Haiti”
poker tournaments that have appeared on their tourney schedule. All tournament fees collected in these events will be donated to charities currently involved in the aid effort in Haiti.
There are also tourneys called “Aid for Haiti no play” which allow players to make a donation without having to take to the green felt to compete. All donations will be matched by Full Tilt.
There’s also an “Aid for Haiti” player account, to which players can transfer funds directly.
PokerStars has adopted a similar stance on the matter. In the
PokerStars client menu, players can click on Request then on Transfer Funds and they can make direct donations to a special player account called “Haiti Fund”. On top of that, in their Special Tournaments section, players can register for the “Haiti Earthquake Relief” tournaments. These events are not actual competitive ones. Players can buy in from $1 to $1,000 and all buy-ins will go to charities as donations.
Given the sheer size of the poker room, PokerStars’ fund raising efforts are already yielding nice results, with thousands of individuals having contributed already.
Cake Poker and Doyle’s Room have jumped on the bandwagon too. Cake Poker has set up three accounts to which donations can be made. All donations will be matched by Cake before they’re sent to the American Red Cross. Doyle’s room will donate all the tourney fees collected in Wednesday’s Bounty tournament to Haiti relief agencies too, not before matching the sum though.
