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Liv Boeree is donating more than a half a million of her historic score at World Series of Poker (WSOP) Paradise to fight factory farming, the science communicator and former poker pro announced today.
Boeree, who in December finished fourth in the first-ever $25,000 buy-in Super Main Event for $2.8 million — the largest tournament score ever by a woman — wrote on X that she was “giving $560,000 away to pigs” and shared why it is a cause she is passionate about.
Pigs on the Wing
In a Substack article, Boeree wrote that she verbally pledged to donate a portion of her winnings on Day 1 of the $50 million guaranteed tournament after seeing a story on social media about the “unnecessarily poor treatment of factory-farmed pigs in America that was so miserable I couldn’t get it out of my head.”
The story involved a farm fire in Greene County, North Carolina that led to 1,000 pigs burning to death.
“When in the shower trying to get myself psyched to play, I made an out-loud pledge to the universe to donate 20% of whatever I win to improve the conditions of factory-farmed animals,” Boeree wrote. “And then I score the biggest win of my life, translating to $560,000 to this cause.”
Another player at the Super Main Event final table, Justin Bonomo, also pledged to donate a portion of his winnings to charity after playing the event in a Palestinian keffiyeh that nearly got him disqualified.
History of Philanthropy
Boeree, who has $6.7 million in Hendon Mob earnings, has a lengthy history of donating to causes she is passionate about.
When Boeree and Igor Kurganov won the 2017 $10,000 Tag Team Championship, they donated half their winnings to Kurganov’s Raising for Effective Giving (REG) charity.
The couple are advocates of “effective altruism” and Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, notably entrusted Kurganov with $5.7 billion to fight the cause, a figure reported by the Wall Street Journal that Boeree says is “much smaller.”
Hear from Kurganov at the WPT World Championship
“We fundraise for the very best charities in the areas of poverty alleviation, animal welfare and future suffering prevention, for example, The Against Malaria Foundation for poverty, Sentience Politics for animals and Foundational Research Institute (FRI) for the far future,” Boeree told the Huffington Post in 2016.
Return to Poker for Boeree?
In her Substack post, Boeree discussed retiring from poker in 2019 after she’d “grown to loathe everything poker.”
“It had devolved from a source of joy, into a tiresome repetitive chore,” the 2010 European Poker Tour (EPT) Sanremo champion wrote.
Boeree said she made the rare return to poker at the suggestion of an old friend and has to be happy that she did. The pigs must also be grateful.
Is poker back on the table for Boeree? “I’m not going back to being a pro any time soon, at least not in the old sense,” she wrote. “But (I’ve) definitely got a new love for the game again, and would like to gather some more data points, so I’ll probably play a few more tournaments this coming year.”
Head to Substack to read Boeree’s full post.
Read About Liv Boeree’s Charitable Givings
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