Change for Good

Saw Marco Valerio (formerly of QuadJacks) this week proposing what I thought was an inspired idea.

Having gotten an email from Ultimate Poker informing him he’d be due a whopping $0.18 upon the closing of his account there in Nevada, Marco thought about how he probably wasn’t the only one cashing out for a small amount from the site. As I recall, when the news broke that UP was closing up for good there was a tweet from them confirming they had something like 25,000 player accounts with funds in them, then a follow-up noting how a lot of those accounts had only a dollar or less (I think). (Can’t look it up now as UP has already deleted its Twitter account.)

In any event, being a licensed and regulated site UP couldn’t make like Full Tilt Poker 1.0, UltimateBet, or Absolute Poker and just not bother returning funds, so everyone is getting his or her cabbage back, even if as with Marco it’s only a few pennies.

Marco’s idea -- delivered over Twitter a couple of days ago -- was to suggest players who were interested could pool those piddling returns to make something more substantial, then they could donate whatever amount that turned out to be to a charity. I don’t think a specific one has been picked out as yet, although Marco mentioned hoping maybe to collect “a hundred bucks to buy a child some toys” in an early follow-up tweet.

Within a couple of days the idea has already picked up a lot of momentum, with many chiming in wanting to donate to the cause. I told Marco I’d like to as well, even though I never deposited anything in my UP account. Now it looks like he’s already had more than $1K pledged altogether (including some “matching” pledges by some).

Anyhow, I thought it was a neat thought and Marco a good person to have had it, considering his well-connected place within the web of poker people. Here’s a webpage he’s set up describing both the idea and how things are progressing thus far that includes info about how you can get involved, too, with this “spontaneous act of poker kindness” ideer if you wish.