A Year Later Eastgate WSOP Bracelet Buyer Revealed

Scottish philanthropist keeps generating more charity funds from bracelet

At the end of 2010 a young Danish poker pro Peter Eastgate put his 2008 WSOP Main Event winners bracelet up for sale on eBay, which caused a bit of a stir in the poker world.

Eastgate decided that since he did not wear jewellery, he would rather put the bracelet up for sale to generate funds for a charity, instead of keeping it to gather dust. So the bracelet was sold for $147 500 to one of 116 bidders, raising a significant amount for Eastgate's chosen charity UNICEF.

At the time the buyer was unknown and over a year later he has been identified as William Haughey, Scottish multimillionaire and philanthropist, the founder and chairman of a GBP400 million in turnover company.

“That was the only reason why I bought the bracelet. I paid $150,000 for the bracelet, but if the money wasn’t going to charity I wouldn’t have even paid $50,000 for it. Some of the younger players said that the integrity of the bracelet was lost, and there was no respect, but the kids in Africa will be cheering Peter Eastgate today and not worrying about what the poker blogs are saying,” said Haughey.

Haughey has proposed a special tournament to the World Series of Poker offering the bracelet as a prize with the proceeds channeled to charity. Even more, he has generously committed to matching the buy-in up to $1 000 000, with half of the funds raised directed to a charity of the WSOP’s own choice and the other half to a British cancer hospital due to be built.

Haughey has already donated millions to charity, and Eastgate's favourite UNICEF received from Haughey $100 000 in 2010 to aid children victims of the Pakistan floods.

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