Poker pros, poker rooms and casinos work hard to use their fame and fortune for good causes. They sometimes work alone and sometimes work together, but it is guaranteed that the pros, casinos and poker rooms are going to host a charity poker tournament at some point during the year. The most recent charity poker announcement comes from Absolute Poker.
Absolute Poker recently announced that their celebrity poker endorser Trishelle Cannatella will be co-hosting the V Foundation Charity Poker Tournament. The tournament is a two day affair and will begin on March 24th in Reno, Nevada. The event will be a $200 plus $30 re-buy poker tournament and the majority of the funds will be donated to the V Foundation for cancer research.
The event will last two days and will be filled with poker action as well as other events. The charity poker tournament will take place as well as a silent auction and private dinner. The event will also have the Take It Downhill Poker Pro Ski Challenge in which fellow Absolute Poker players Matt Vengrin and Lacey Jones will be participating.
Other celebrities from both the sports and entertainment worlds will be competing in the event as well. Jose Canseco and Mekhi Phifer are among the celebrities participating. Poker pros participating in the event besides Jones and Vengrin are: Liv Boeree, Tiffany Michelle, Erick Lindgren, Jeff Madsen, Antonio Esfandiari , Adam Levy, Alex Outhred, Alec Torelli and many others.
Many of the above mentioned are from Absolute Poker’s sister site, UB. Ultimate Bet will also be sponsoring the event. As host, Cannatella has a good bit of experience when it comes to charity poker tournaments.
Back in February, Cannatella managed to outlast the field of sixty competitors to win the title of the charity tournament that supported the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The event had a buy-in of $1,000 plus $70 and Trishelle took top honors.
Cannatella has been doing quite well for herself ever since signing with Absolute Poker. The poker player won $20,000 when she finished in third place at the World Poker tour celebrity Invitational. She also won a $7,000 guaranteed tournament at Absolute Poker, beating almost 200 other competitors.
Before she joined the poker room, Cannetella was best known for her reality television work. She first started her career on the popular MTV television show, The Real World. Cannetella was part of the cast which lived in Las Vegas. She then was featured on Punk’d, Fear Factor, Criminal Minds, The Hills, The Dukes of Hazard: The Beginning, The Surreal Life, Playboy: Girls of Reality TV and many others.
Like mentioned before, the tournament will benefit the V Foundation which supports cancer research. The foundation is named after Jim Valvano who won the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament in 1983 with North Carolina State. The foundation is supported by ESPN and other high profile fundraisers such as a golf outing and a college basketball tournament called the Jimmy V Classic.