UltimateBet Hosts Charity Tourneys to Benefit Darfur
If it wasn’t for a good cause, I would probably never write anything positive about UB. But, I think it is good that sites use their popularity to raise money for charities accross the world that really need it.
Beginning today, UltimateBet begins hosting a weekend-long series of six poker tournaments to raise money for the charity, Ante Up for Africa, which offers aid to the people affected by the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. The series is kicked off today with a $10+$10 tourney hosted by Phil Hellmuth at 8 p.m. A second charity $20+$20 event begins at 9 p.m. and will be hosted by Annie Duke.
Saturdays action will be hosted by the UltimateBet Star Players Team beginning at 5 p.m. with a $20+$20 event followed by a $10+$10 tournament hosted by Don Cheadle and Annie Duke at 6 p.m. Sunday’s line-up begins again at 5 p.m. with a $10+$10 tourney hosted by Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy. At 6 p.m. the Online Team UB will host a $20+$20 event.
The buy-in for all the tournaments will go into a prize pool where tournament fees will be donated to Ante Up for Africa. UltimateBet will also be donating prizes to the cash pool for participants in each tournament. Some of the prizes up for grabs include Aruba 100-seat entries for Sept. 13, iAmplify Phil Hellmuth White to Black Belt courses, UltimateBet gear, AUFA Christian Audigier autographed t-shirts, gas cards, magazine subscriptions and more.
In addition to the prizes, participants will have the opportunity of playing with some of poker’s biggest stars. A few of the players confirmed to participate include Gary “Debo34″ DeBernardi, Shawn Rice, Mark “P0ker H0″ Kroo, James “POKERPRO33″ Campbell and Tiffany Michelle along with Hellmuth, Duke and Josephy. Don Cheadle and Annie Duke, who together created the charity, put on another star-studded event at the 2008 WSOP. In attendance were Ray Romano, Ben and Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Adam Sandler and Charles Barkley.
Players who aren’t able to participate in the tournament series can make donations under the ‘Scheduled Tournaments’ tab; under ‘Private’ there is a listing for Ante Up for Africa. There, players can donate in $10, $25, $50 and $100 increments.
Who knows, maybe POTRIPPER himself might show up too!
Here is a video of Don Cheadle speaking at the live version of the tournament:
