A special charity event takes place this Saturday as some of the biggest film and TV stars in the world take to the felt to raise funds in the fight against Coronavirus.
Organised by PokerStars, the Stars Call For Action (SFCA) charity poker tournament will pitch some of the most interesting celebrity poker players ever to look down at a pair of hole cards.
With $1 million being donated to charity, that will be broken down in the following way. $500,000 will go directly to CARE International, PokerStars’ chosen humanitarian relief fund, with viewer donations also going to CARE. The other half of the prizepool (PokerStars are donating a $10,000 buy-in for each of the 100 players) will be battled for in the tournament, with the players who make the money able to donate the money they win to their chosen charity.
Any celebrities who leave the party early go into a side event where 10% of the prizepool goes to CARE.
The tournaments take place from 14:00 Eastern Time (7pm GMT) on Saturday May 9th, with the stream available to watch with commentary from James Hartigan and Lex Veldhuis on the PokerStars Twitch channel.
With plenty of big celebrity names taking part, PokerStars will be inviting a randomly selected poker fan to play, with the two groups playing down to two tables before they combine and load up Zoom cameras to bring each player to the screen and a final play down to the eventual winner.
The players involved are mouthwatering, with David Schwimmer, Amy Schumer, Michael Cera, Hank Azaria, Eric Bogosian and Andy Bellin joined by Rounders pair actor Ed Norton and writer Brian Koppelman. Hank Azaria told the PokerStars blog that it was easy to put together.
“PokerStars was generous enough to offer this tremendous deal of putting it up to a million dollars.” He said. “It’s made us have to scramble to find a lot of celebrities to fill it, but we’re getting a great response.”
Co-player Andy Bellin said, “If there was ever a time to design an online charity poker tournament, this is it,” adding that no-one was turning them down given it’s for such a good cause. “We started asking various friends of ours if they would play, and it just seemed like everybody was on the same page. I doubt we’ve gotten a ‘no’ from anybody.”
It’s sure to be a lot of fun, and we’ll be bringing you news of who the eventual winner is after the weekend right here on Calvin Ayre.
