Special pages were set up on the various sites to enable players to make donations easily to the Haiti relief efforts and players on all three sites are able to transfer funds quickly and easily direct from their online accounts on those sites to a Haiti Fund. Poker Stars, Cake Poker as well as Full Tilt Poker have promised to match each donation made, dollar for dollar.

To date there has been over $760,000 donated by more than 50,000 players resulting in donations by the online poker community exceeding an amount $1.5 million in view of the dollar for dollar match.

D’Amato, added that he is proud to be part of the community after seeing the generosity that the online poker players are showing towards the devastation in Haiti.

Cake Poker and Full Tilt are offering online tournaments and will be donating all registration fees to the Red Cross, UNICEF or Doctors Without Borders.

Another leading online poker room, Titan Poker, is hosting a $10 buy-in event on January 31st and will be donating all proceeds to Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. They will match the total amount of buy-ins made at this event. A little bit different is the donation offer of Pacific Poker. They host four different freeroll tournaments and donate $1 for each player that registers for one of these tournament.

Online players can also donate directly to the Red Cross without physically playing in the tournament by buying in directly to “no play” tournaments which can already be found in the Titan Poker lobby under the “Aid for Haiti” tab.

Shay Ben-Yitzhak, the Israel non-executive director of 888poker.net resigned recently in order to spend more quality time with his family.

888poker.net chairman, Richard Kilsby expressed appreciation on behalf of the board and all at the company for Shay’s contribution as one of the original founders of the business. Shay was instrumental in helping the company to grow from its infancy to where it is today. Kilsby wished Shay the very best for the future.

Another one of 888poker.net’s founders and one of Israel’s wealthiest men Aharon Shaked, died on Saturday at the age of only 58 after fighting a serious illness.

Aharon originally practiced as a dentist in Israel and during 1990, while attending a Dentistry Conference in Monte Carlo, he noticed crowds of people visiting the city’s casino. When he returned to Israel he decided to establish an online casino with his brother Avi. Neither Aharon nor Avi had any experience in gambling so they visited the casino in Taba, in Sinai where they learned how to play.

Thereafter the brothers contacted the Ben Yitzhak brothers who had the technological knowledge needed for their new venture.

During 1995 the four men took out a loan and bought a gaming license in Antigua for $100,000 and founded 888.

The company was floated on the London Stock Exchange during 2005 with the Shaked brothers owning 70% of the stocks. Aharon and Avi sold stocks worth $91.3 million and each held onto stocks worth $267 million.

Aharon Shaked was a modest man who preferred putting his profits towards charities for underprivileged children rather than spending it on luxuries for himself.

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