110,776.
That’s the number of people all across North America who had a meal who otherwise wouldn’t have without the support of the poker venues and poker players who have participated in our Restock the Shelves charity food bank initiative over the past two years.
We and our partner in this endeavor, Blue Shark Optics, are proud of that number. But just as your first major tournament win only makes you desire the next one even more, we want to feed more people this year. We need to feed more people this year.
The premise is simple. Poker rooms designate one or more of their tournaments on Jan. 16 as a Restock The Shelves event and all of the food and cash donations they receive from their players go directly to a food bank organization in their community. That’s right, every can or dollar you donate helps one of your neighbors eat.
And we make it easy for poker rooms to participate. They can choose to hold their tournament on a different day if they want or if they don’t run tournaments, they can do a cash-game promotion or simply put an empty barrel in their room for their players to fill.
Yes, it’s that easy. But despite that, only about 10 percent of the poker rooms in the United States join us each year. We could use your help increasing that number as there is still time to for rooms to join us to make their communities stronger.
What can you do? Go to AnteUpMagazine.Com/restock for a list of participating rooms (plus see Pages 32-33 in our January issue) and make plans to show up for their event with as much food as you can carry. Bring your friends, too. Many of the rooms who participate will give you extra tournament chips or raffle prizes for donations. If you don’t see your favorite room listed, ask the manager to contact us and we’ll be happy to tell them how easy and rewarding it is to participate.
Being hungry at the poker table is a good thing. Being hungry in real life isn’t.
We’ll see you at the tables on Jan. 16.
— Christopher Cosenza and Scott Long
