Poker Player Among UK's Largest Charity Donors

Poker Player Among UK's Largest Charity Donors

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

The Sunday Times published its annual UK Rich List earlier this week and there were a couple of names in it that will be very familiar to poker fans.

Chief among them is hedge fund manager Talal Shakerchi. The 51-year-old is a regular in High Roller events around the globe and has career earnings of over $2m. He was ranked =968th on the list with an estimated fortune of around £100m.

Most impressive though was Shakerchi's appearance in the list of charitable donors. The 2013 EPT London High Roller was the 25th largest charitable donor in the country having given away an estimated £5m to good causes.

Also appearing on the Sunday Times list is another high roller regular, Paul Newey. The slot-machine king was 415th with an estimated fortune of £235m.

Shakerchi of course isn't the only poker player who does his bit for charity. Liv Boeree, Igor Kurganov and Philipp Gruissem founded Raising for Effective Giving (REG) which tries to get poker players to donate 2 percent of their gross winnings per quarter.

Since launching in 2014, the organisation has raised over $500,000.



Tags: Talal Shakerchi, Paul Newey, Raising for Effective Giving