Let's simplify:

Giving to charity = Good

who the **** wins at poker.

That totally depends on the "charity". Giant organization like the Red Cross are almost entirely a scam where very little of the donations actually filter through to the people in need. Local charities, however, can be very worthwhile. Here in my town there is a local charity house that is funded/stocked entirely by community donations. When you go there to donate or drop stuff off you can literally see the poor people that are there being helped - its not all a scam.

OP is conflating good deeds with corporate interest.

Presumably there'll be a transportation cost involved in getting to said poor country before you make good with your donation? Also, you'll probably need to eat while you're there and maybe best to book a hotel for a couple of nights.. I would check with your boss asap about taking the time off work, just to be sure. You might have to take unpaid leave if you've used all your holiday.

When you arrive, how do you decide who gets the cash?

On second thoughts it might be prudent to book a week at the hotel instead. You'll need some time to make a few contacts before dispensing all your hard earned.

How much you got left now?

This is the wrong way to think about charity giving and overheads.

Your local charity no doubt does some great work but it is small scale, and can operate with low overheads. It will never have the impact that a large well run organisation can have however.

A charity working at a nationwide or worldwide level needs to spend a significant chunk of money on overheads in order to provide more ambitious projects, on going support and care for individuals/their chosen cause. Money needs to be spent on premises, distribution, infrastructure, research, training, skilled capable employees etc. To gain donations, you also need advertising exposure, which costs a lot of money, but can generate a lot more money.

In order to grow any type of successful business, it is obviously essential that you invest by employing talented people and reward them accordingly. Also by designating a significant percentage to advertising and other areas of investment. Spend money to make money. This is not disputed in the business community, but when a charity does this people are quick to call it money grabbing.. scam etc.

Of course there are good and bad organisations. You should always do your research if you have concerns about how a charity is run, but basing your judgement purely on their overhead percentage is flawed logic.


This might change your opinion...

(I don't agree with all this but he raises some interesting points):

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallot..._wrong/details

OP obv a liberal, BLM and Antifa supporter am i right? Scum of America!

Spot on. Missed snowflake as well.

You are neither sage nor a.... you know let's just end it with please stop posting.

Over simplification is right in OP's wheelhouse. OP's problem seems to be he was not making any points, solid or otherwise. He simply thinks what he offered was some "in-depth" insight into a non-issue.

Thanks for the condescending insights however.

To simplify the structure of the issue for you, if SJW's do not want poker winnings donated to them, then they do not have to accept them as donations.... go ponder that in the "semi-intelligent SJW"' forum, not the prospective donors' forum.

Maybe then you and OP can turn your high-wattage intelligence ,solid moral compasses, and communication skills to pondering how charities themselves make bank:

"In 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which had donated $218m to prevent polio and measles in the Niger Delta, had also invested $423m in oil companies which were alleged to have polluted the Delta and exacerbated these health problems."

https://www.theguardian.com/voluntar...se-investments

Jumping to some conclusions there.

I am not a Liberal nor am I an American, and am I not a member of either of those organisations, but I do believe in fairness.

This is similar and should be highlighted.

But Microsoft create products and services that make a meaningful contribution to society. A professional poker player's only contribution is tax to the government that is gained from other people's pockets.

The world isn't perfect and there are trade offs but poker profits donated to charities with no thought or consideration to how the money is earned I think should be questioned.

I wonder if all of the charities REG support would accept donations from a casino operator?

Apologies to the forum moderators for me posting more than 100 words in an earlier post (over my agreed 100 word limit).

I was put off by this guy MikkeD who was obsessing about if a word with an apostrophe or a slash in it counted as one or as two words. I gave him a straightforward answer that I was going by Apache OpenOffice word count software's results but this did not satisfy him.

Straight after reading his complaint I accidentally posted about 125 words which he then of course was delighted by.

If you feel the need to publicise the fact that you give to charity, then it's not charity at all in the vast majority of cases. This pretty much covers most of the guys with the REG badge.

I agree with the first part of the statement but putting aside whether there might be some issues with poker profits going to charities, I think it is reasonable enough that REG gives itself additional exposure by players wearing the badge.

REG accepts donations from anyone, not just via a percentage of profits of poker players that are on board.

I ran a poll on Twitter (people responding were I'd estimate ~90% poker people)

The question asked was:

What do you think about poker players giving a percentage of their profits to charity?

Results from the choice of four answers: 61 votes

A) It is a great thing 57% (35 votes)
B) Donations are to make the player look good 13% (8 votes)
C) There are ethical conflicts 3% (2 votes)
D) **** off SageDonkey 27% (16 votes)

so i guess actors, artists, novelists, game designers, singers, athletes, and similar professions are all ethically questionable professions since they produce nothing meaningful to society except entertainment like poker players.

my dad was an architect and i never thought someone would be able to make an argument that it was an unethical profession until now. after all he just made buildings have more style. contractors and engineers can easily get by without an architect.

It is true that a consistently winning player, like the house, is offering a gambling entertainment service but there is little doubt that it also causes some harm to society, your other groups generally don't.

On this note, some charities refuse donations from tobacco and alcohol companies. So for those charities there is a line and other obvious things such as the proceeds of crime are the wrong side of the line too.

The arts and sport are tremendously valuable and enriching to society in a number of ways, video games perhaps less so.

poker doesnt generally cause harm either. for every person who lost their life savings in poker there are probably hundreds who never even had any savings because of money they spent on other forms of entertainment or junk they didnt need. im sure a lot of ppl spend money on season tickets and, all the extra costs associated with that, instead of saving their money for a rough patch. so you have a wife and 2 kids and get cheap season tickets to a pro football team. thats probably at least 5k with parking, concessions, and apparel. so if you do that for ten years thats like throwing away 50k. now the economy tanks and you lose your job. you have no savings and cant make your house payment. you owe more on your house than its worth now. i bet you wish you had some savings instead of wasting it on sports.

maybe poker is more enriching than the arts or sports. it at least can help you learn some basic math and reasoning skills. im always amused at the reasoning and math skills that the coaches and announcers for football use in their analysis. art is hilarious also with the prices being determined by who created it instead of the actual art itself. a painting by pollock could be $100,000,000 but if someone found out it was actually painted by some no-name homless guy its worth $10. no one cares about the art itself. its just a bunch of con artists tricking ppl to pay a fortune for some prestige invented by art critics.

alcohol has been greatly beneficial to society. think how many of us would not even exist today if our ancestors never were intoxicated and didnt get the poor judgement or courage that caused the birth of someone in our family tree. disinfecting water and wounds so everyone didnt die in less sanitary time periods was pretty good too.

Nice post. Agree that many things are or can be multi-faceted.

Benjamin Pollak has just donated 3% of his $3.5M 3rd place WSOP ME to REG
a very large amount of money, $105K, apparently in his first ever tournament under the REG banner.

On his Twitter account:

Pollak Benjamin‏ @PollakB 6h6 hours ago

For my 1st participation , I'm more than happy to raise 105k$ to @REGcharity ❤️

Who cares where the money comes from

It's not like these poker players are gonna stop playing poker if they can't donate

Poker+donation > Poker+ not donating

~90% of *poker players* appear to be of the same view to you. The figure among the general public if polled would be lower I feel but probably still well over 50%.

So for the 90%, purely looking at things from a hard nosed business perspective, is there an issue with additional money being taken out of the poker ecosystem? (Naturally some money is always taken out to pay for day to day living expenses, or buying a house etc.)

It's effectively additional rake but "worse" as not even reinvested by poker operators.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.

My guess is MOST *rational* people aren't going to give a damn where the money comes from that is donated.

You aren't doing a very good job of it. After all, how likely was it that you were going to be in pots with any who donated? Further, if they ARE at your table or in your event, you are getting the same funds from them as you would have without the donations to charity. It is not as though the donation is the difference between playing and being busto...

Further, if it INCREASES the perception of poker players as decent people, then that draws MORE people into the game (and potentially builds upon the Hesp factor). Admittedly, the masses don't typically give a rat's ass though...so let people donate if they want as it doesn't affect you in ANY manner.

Sorry, but your above post truly appears moronic.

Do you really think there is an "issue", in any sense of the word, when someone cashes out from a poker game ?

I think 27% of the respondents to your Twitter poll got it right, with 98% finding no merit in your "issue" posited as OP.

I find it hilarious, in a prat fall sense, that you continue to post in this thread after that reality check. OTOH, if you really can't help it, it may be sad ..... but I laughed at the time.

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratfall_effect

It seems like you would first have to decide whether to accept a more consequentialist or deontological view of ethics to answer this question. If consequentialist, I think it would be easy to argue that the positives from donating money in the most effective ways to the neediest people outweigh harms done toward addicted gamblers. If deontological, you'd have to look at whether the addicted gambler is truly consenting to the game.

There could be an issue when $105K is taken permanently from the poker economy that may have trickled down or already have been in the pockets of Ben Pollak's backers, if he had backers.

You've mis-represented some of the poll results. 13% said donations were to make the player look good. *I* gave people the **** off SageDonkey option to add a little humour and because I'm aware that many players see this as a non-question, or don't care either way so voted that way because they know I can be a bit left field with some of my views.