I sat in my living room, and flipped between CNN and The Weather Channel. My mind struggled to process the catastrophic devastation unleashed by Katrina.
Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my face as the magnitude of this disaster set in. I realized that the last time I felt this way was during the tsunami, and 9/11 before that.
“I have to do something,” I thought, “but what?”
During the World Series of Poker, a good friend of several poker bloggers, Charlie Tuttle, died from cancer. A few Charlie’s friends put together a charity tournament at PokerStars, and we raised over $2000 dollars for the hospital that treated him.
“Why not run a small tournament like that?” I thought. “I’m going to do WWdN tournaments anyway, so why not do one to raise money for hurricane relief?”
I walked to my office, and sent an e-mail to one of my friends at PokerStars:
. . . I thought we may have an opportunity to help a lot of people, if we did a PokerStars charity tournament for the Red Cross, to support Hurricane Katrina relief.
I’m thinking a $20 buy-in, with 19.99 going to the Red Cross. We did the same structure with the Charlie Tuttle tournament, so we were basically just playing for bragging rights and good karma, and there were lots of great jokes about the ninety-seven cents in the prize pool.
I know PokerStars is crazy busy with the WCOOP, so if you don’t have time to make this a site-wide thing, would you be able to set it up the same way you set up the Charlie Tuttle Blogger tourney?
I planned on offering up a bust out gift, like an autographed book or something, and maybe I could even make a trophy that would go to the winner. Maybe we could get something from the FPP store for people who make the final table? If PokerStars can’t commit too many resources to this, I’m happy to buy the prizes and stuff myself.
Anne walked into my office. “Can we walk the dogs?” She said.
“In a minute,” I said. I turned around in my chair, and told her about my tournament idea.
“You should ask PokerStars if they’ll match the contributions,” she said.
I thought about this . . . I was already asking for a private tournament to be set up right in the middle of the World Championship of Online Poker, and I was already asking for some prizes from the FPP store . . . “Screw it. I’m already asking for the Moon. I may as well ask for the stars, too.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said, “I’m totally going to do that.”
I told Anne about my idea, and she suggested that PokerStars could match whatever the prize pool is. What do you think?
Talk to you soon,
Wil
We walked the dogs through the balmy August night, and counted our blessings.
The next morning, I got a call from Lee Jones, who is the manager of the poker room at PokerStars, and a good friend of mine.
“I want to talk to you about your tournament idea,” he said. Something in his voice made me feel like I’d been called into the principal’s office.
“Uh-oh,” I thought, “I over-stepped.”
“Okay . . .” I said.
“Do you know about the tsunami relief efforts we did?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
Lee told me how PokerStars ran several charity tournaments, and did some other things that eventually resulted in PokerStars players contributing nearly $200,000 to the Red Cross.
“PokerStars matched their contributions, and we ended up sending four hundred thousand dollars for relief efforts.” He said.
“Oh my god,” I said, “I had no idea.”
“Yeah,” Lee said, “it was pretty incredible.”
He paused a moment, and said, “So. Since you mentioned your idea on your blog, we’ve been getting tons of e-mail from players who want to know what we’re going to do for Katrina . . . ”
“Here it comes. I’m totally busted. Crap.”
“. . . and we’re going to do the same thing.”
“Really!?”
“Really!?”
I could hear a smile in Lee’s voice. “[The President of PokerStars] is totally on board, and it’s going to be huge. We’re going to put it on the Pokerstars blog, and on the client, and on the home page.”
“Holy —” I said, “Wow! We’re going to help so many people!”
“We sure are.”
“I love it that this little idea I had has turned into something so much bigger.” I said.
“About that.” Lee said, “In addition to the twenty dollar freeze out, we’re going to do a five dollar tournament also.”
“What a great idea!” I said. “Do we have dates?”
“Yes,” he said. “We thought about waiting until the WCOOP was over, but the fact is they are going to need relief immediately, and we want to get some money to them as quickly as possible. We’re going to do the five dollar event on Monday, September 12th at 9:30 Eastern.”
I scribbled that down in my book.
“And we’ll do the twenty dollar event on Wednesday, September 14th at the same time.”
“Got it.” I said.
We spoke for a few more minutes, (we are friends, after all) and after I hung up the phone, I did my patented run-around-the-house-hollering move.
Otis has all the tournament details at the PokerStars blog:
. . . coming up on September 12th and 14th, PokerStars.com and Wil Wheaton will host two Hurricane Katrina Relief tournaments with all proceeds going to the American Red Cross. PokerStars will be matching every buy-in 100% and will be offering prizes to the winners. Wil will also be offering autographed copies of one of his books to every member of both final tables.
The event on September 12th will be a $5+$0 No-Limit Hold’em freezeout at 9:30pm.
The event on September 14th will be a $20+$0 No-Limit Hold’em freezeout tournament at 9:30pm
You’ll find the tournaments under the “Tourney” and “Special” tabs.
Until the prizes are finalized, I can’t list exactly what they will be, but they are going to be very cool (so cool, I’ll be playing my “A” game 😉 but I can promise autographed copies of Dancing Barefoot for everyone who makes the final table in both events, as well as an autographed Just A Geek for whomever knocks me out of each tournament, and the ultimate winner of each tournament.
A quick, personal note about PokerStars before I go today: I love this company. I have been involved in several business relationships over the years, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier in my life. I feel less like a sponsored player and more like a member of a family. I asked for an awful lot, with very little notice, and they willingly gave more than I ever hoped for or expected. I’m so proud and grateful to be part of such a classy organization, with such good people.
So please, sign up for PokerStars, and join me in one or both of these tournaments. It’s going to be incredibly fun, and will hopefully make a positive difference in the world.
While I composed this entry, I had CNN on in the background, and the level of suffering and devastation is just overwhelming. The looting, the people who are trapped and dying, the destruction of entire cities . . . it’s suffocating. This is going to get worse, and now, more than ever, good people need to come together and show what we are made of. Whatever you can do, do it. I suggest contributing to:
And take a minute today to call the people you love. If any of us needed a reminder of how fragile life is, we just got it.
Final note: South Central Rain just came on iTunes . . . it’s the first time in my life this song that I love has felt chilling.
So they really blew it with 
