Thursday was our 3rd annual Ante Up for Africa tournament at the World Series of Poker and it was a huge success. Three years ago Don Cheadle, Norman Epstein and I founded Ante Up for Africa, a charity to raise money for relief efforts in Darfur through poker events. When we founded the charity we approached Jeffrey Pollack, the Commissioner of the World Series of Poker, who was so enthusiastic about the cause that he jumped in with both feet and had the WSOP partner with us. AUFA became an official WSOP event and our first year we raised $700K. Before Thursday our charity had raised $2.1m for the Darfuri people.

This year we were lucky enough to have the addition of ESPN covering the event as a full episode of their WSOP coverage. We knew that would be amazing in terms of increased participation in the event but more importantly the increased awareness that the coverage will create has immeasurable value. The way to make lasting change in the region is through education and awareness because that creates passion in people, passion that gets communicated to governments and governments ultimately create change.

This year we had 138 players pony up $5K to play. We had a huge poker pro presence with Jennifer Harman, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel, Rafe Furst, John Hennigan and Phil Gordon all making the final table. We also had a bigger celebrity presence than ever before. Some of the celebs in attrendance were Sarah Silverman, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Alexander, Nelly, Cedric the Entertainer, Herschel Walker (I love you Herschel!), Charles Barkley, Dean Cain and Brad Garrett. I, of course, went around and took pictures of a bunch of them.

Don and I giving interviews before the event

There's Don playing next to Ultimatebet.com pro Matt Graham

Cedric the Entertainer started at my table and cracked my TT with QJ!

Brad Garrett deep in thought during a hand. Maybe he is thinking about crushing me during the NBC Heads Up Challenge!

There's Superman, Dean Cain. I gave him a poker lesson a couple of months ago...

Nelly. He played in our Monte Carlo event as well.

Here's Matt Damon.

Here's Matt Damon after I asked him to give me the finger!

Jason Alexander didn't fare too well in our event but finished day 1 of the main event with 90K in chips!

There's my darling Herschel Walker.

Our event is very different than most charity events in that we withhold nothing from the prize pool. We depend on the winners to donate back a portion of their winnings and every year we have gotten very lucky with the generosity of the players. This year was no exception. Our winner, Alex Bolotin, donated half his $170K win back to us. 18 people cashed and the total money donated back topped $360K! That is what I call a successful event. The money will go mainly to Refugees International and Enough Project.

Don and I congratulate our winner, Alex Bolotin!

Thank you to everyone who came out and supported the cause and to all the generous players who ponied up $5K to play. Thank you to the poker, sports and entertainment celebrities who came out to play. And, of course, a huge thank you to all of our winners who were so generous with their donations. The money and awareness we raised Thursday will go a long way to finding a long term solution in Darfur.

I won’t let the people behind the scenes go without mention either. Without Norman Epstein we could never pull this off. Of the three founders, Norman is the one who really keeps this organization ticking while Don and I get most of the credit. Believe me, that is totally backwards! Brandon Rosen and Jeff Goldenberg get a huge nod as well for running the event on the ground. Danika Berry and Roxanne Romero did a great job on the publicity side. And, of course, there are the folks at the World Series of Poker without whom this event would never happen: Jeffrey Pollack whose vision it really was to integrate AUFA into the WSOP gets a huge shoutout. And his team is amazing with a special mention to Seth Palansky. Without all the people working behind the scenes AUFA could never be the success that it is.

Let me just say again we raised $360K! Every year I am overwhelmed by the amount of money we raise in just a single day.

Our next event will be October 29th at San Manuel Casino. Please, come join us there and help Ante Up for Africa continue to do this very important work.