In the new month, individuals and corporations around the world continue to donate money for the victims of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck the island nation of Haiti on January 12th. The popular poker buddy list software PlayerGPS is also getting into the act.
Text found on the program’s website explains, “PlayerGPS names February ‘Haiti Relief Month.’ We will be donating 100% of our gross revenue to the Clinton Bush Fund to support the earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti.” The site, which recently came under new ownership after merging with PlayerStalker, has seen its backend overhauled to interact smoothly with each online poker room.
PlayerGPS sends alerts via e-mail, instant messenger, and text message when players sign into an online poker room and sit down to play. The poker software program is typically used as a fish-finder, as players can instantly locate weak competition to play with. Other players use the tool as a security device to track unauthorized logins.
Three levels exist for PlayerGPS membership. The first, affectionately dubbed Grinder, supports stakes of $0.50/$1 to $1/$2 and weighs in at $14.99 per month. The site is quick to point out that this amounts to $0.49 per day. Thirty text messages per month are allowed at the Grinder level, which supports Omaha, Stud, Hold’em, and Mixed games. The next level up is Shark, which allows you to search games up to $3/$6 and receive up to 50 text messages per month. The granddaddy of memberships is Balla, which allows you to search all games at all stakes and receive up to 100 text messages per month. The Shark and Balla memberships run $24.99 per month and $49.99 per month, respectively.
PlayerGPS’ supported instant messaging services include AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, and Skype. Several pros of the new Everleaf/UPN Network site Victory Poker endorse the product, including Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari, Andrew “good2cu” Robl, Brian “tsarrast” Rast, Dan Bilzerian, Alec “traheho” Torelli, and Keith Gipson. Bilzerian’s testimonial on the PlayerGPS website is especially humorous: “Damn PlayerGPS alerts, I have to kick all the girls out of bed just to go punish the monkeys!”
Also endorsing PlayerGPS is 2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe Main Event winner and Betfair pro Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, who made her “Poker After Dark” debut last month. Obrestad recently tore up the competition at the 2010 Aussie Millions, winning an AUD $1,000 Pot Limit Omaha tournament for AUD $40,000 before finishing seventh in the series’ Main Event for AUD $175,000. Obrestad’s testimonial simply reads, “PlayerGPS is a really helpful tool! Love it!”
In an interview with the popular software review site PokerSoftware.com, a representative from PlayerGPS described the importance of creating a way to donate to the victims of the Haiti earthquake: “Every single dollar that goes into PlayerGPS is going to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. A lot of the other affiliate sites have done it and it’ll give people a good reason to try out our product.”
Meanwhile, the world’s largest online poker site, PokerStars, noted that it sent $1.5 million to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies after matching player funds. Rival site Full Tilt Poker matched $329,000 in player donations for a total contribution of $659,000. The Calvin Ayre Foundation, which has pledged up to $1 million to benefit the victims of the trembler, noted that it has raised £155,000 to date. Coupled with fundraising efforts on sites like DoylesRoom, UB.com, Absolute Poker, and RedKings, the poker community has turned out in force.
Visit PlayerGPS for more information on the world of online poker buddy lists.
