Pokerplayer Are All Heart, Says PPA

Over 50 000 players have made charitable donations to ease the suffering Haiti

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA), a Washington-based poker grassroots advocacy group with more than one million members nationwide, today commended the generosity of poker players in contributing to support relief efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

"Like the rest of the world, the poker community is eager to do anything it can to aid Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. I applaud PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Cake Poker for providing poker players across the globe an easy way to make a contribution," said former Senator Alfonse D'Amato, chairman of the PPA.

The sites have set up special pages where players can easily donate to Haiti relief efforts . Full Tilt and Cake Poker, for example, are offering online tournaments where all registration fees are donated to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders or UNICEF. In addition, players on all three sites can quickly and easily transfer funds directly from their online accounts on the sites to a Haiti Fund that will be given to those organizations. All three sites will match every donation made, dollar for dollar.

More than 50 000 players have donated, and more than $760 000 has been raised. With the dollar for dollar match, the donations on behalf of the online poker community will be in excess of $1.5 million.

"The generosity online poker players are showing makes me even more proud to be part of this community," said D'Amato.