Charitable Donation of FPPs - The Update

Poker Stars gives its player Frequent Player Points (FPPs), which are what they sound like - basically like frequent flier miles, but for poker instead. You can trade them for decks of cards, poker books, etc. Once you've played a lot, you become a "Super Nova" player and you can use FPPs for pretty much anything that costs as least three thousand dollars.

After a little bit of a run around, I was allowed to turn my FPPs into a cash donation for my charity of choice, Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.com). While I was hoping to get a more generous rate of exchange between FPPs and cash, I'm grateful that Stars let me do it at all.

Now comes the second step: I want Stars to let anyone use FPPs for charity, not just Super Nova players. And I want people to be able to make donations of any amount, not just three thousand dollars and up. There are two ways that this could work. The first is that players could email Stars if they want to make a donation. The second is that the donation option would show up in the regular FPP store, alongside the cards and books. It would be better in my opinion for the donation option to show up in the store because more people would use it.

In a thread on www.twoplustwo.com about what Stars players are using for their points for, I said I was donating their value to charity (if you go to the link, search for the name "schwza" to find my posts in the thread). Lee Jones, the Poker Stars Poker Room Manager, said in that thread that i was his hero :) This is pretty cool, as he is a top player and the author of a very famous poker book. In response to that, I wrote this on 7/29/06:

so how about putting a charitable donation in the fpp store? if you do, i'll match the first $5k donated (with my $ going to doctors without borders).

I sent him a private message on 2+2 saying the same thing, and I emailed the guy who I had coordinated with about the original donations, but as of 8/2 no response. If anyone is interested in helping make this happen, please email support@pokerstars.com and let them know.