Running the Beat on Cancer at the WSOP

The 2010 WSOP Main Event helps to fight cancer with many players wearing 1% Bad Beat on Cancer patches showing their commitment to cancer prevention

The Bad Beat on Cancer Initiative started as an idea that was dreamed up by two poker pros. At the 2003 World Series of Poker, Phil Gordon and Rafe Furst first came up with the idea to raise money for cancer research. Both Phil and Rafe had been raising money for cancer research before they met at the WSOP in 2003 but when the two of them came up with the idea for the Bad Beat Cancer Initiative, they knew that it had legs. The idea was to ask poker players to donate 1% of all their winnings to the foundation.
Since that time, the Bad Beat on Cancer Initiative has received over $3.2 million in donations for the Prevent Cancer foundation and it has proven that the poker community can come together to raise a great deal of money for a worthy cause. Many poker players have donate a lot of money and some of the more notable names on the list for this year include Phil Helmuth, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Adam Levy, Andy Block, Chris Moneymaker, Annie Duke, and Toby Macguire to name a few. Adam Levy said it best when he said, “Poker players lead very lucky lifestyles, so it is good to give back when you can.”

It is obvious by the immense success of the initiative that numerous poker professionals agree wholeheartedly with Adam’s philanthropic outlook and 94 players have already pledged to donate money to the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Professional poker player and a former member of the MIT blackjack team, Andy Bloch, said of the initiative, ‘It’s important for all of us to realize that there is a lot of people in unfortunate situations… a lot of us have relatives or might even have cancer ourselves. I didn’t go to school thinking I was going to be a poker player; I thought maybe I’d be an engineer or a lawyer. I wanted to help save the world and this is one way I can do that by still being a poker player.”

The CEO of Prevent Cancer, Jan Bresch Mahrer, talked about how impressed she was with the poker pros and their donations for cancer prevention.

“I think it’s terrific because poker players are not known for their philanthropic endeavors but in reality they are very philanthropic,” she said. “They go out of their way for us.”
Of course, the players playing at the World Series of Poker this year are by no means the only players that are contributing to the Bad Beat on Caner Initiative. Through their public activities, they are building awareness in the community through social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to help raise even more money. In fact, there are now weekly events that take place on Full Tilt Poker and games all around the country to help raise money for the foundation. Spotting someone who has already donated 1% of their winnings on the floor of the big game is easy because they get to wear a green badge as a result of their charitable commitment.

Posted by Joel on Jul 5 2010. Filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry