Twitch $100K Poker Charity Invitational a Huge Success

It was an event like no other, with nine of the most popular streamers across a wide cross-section of the gaming world - including of course poker – battling it out at the Aria in Vegas in the Twitch $100K Poker Charity Invitational, with $100K up for grabs for the charity of the winners’ choice.

Thanks to the innovative guys and girls at TwitchTV, the invitational event saw the likes of Jason ‘jcarverpoker’ Somerville and Lex Veldhuis take on popular game-streamers ‘Reckful’ (World of Warcraft), ‘itsHafu’ (Hearthstone Arena), ‘Onscreen’ (Counterstrike), ‘MitchJones’, ‘Timmac’, ‘PMSProxy’ and In Real Life (IRL) streamer ‘AndyMilonakis’.

Poker and the gaming world have long been inextricably linked, many of today’s biggest names coming from a gamer background or combining the two passions, one of whom seemed more than delighted to be part of the charity event…

…and whatever luck ‘hafu’ had prayed for, it came her way in the 2-day, live streamed event…

Farhan Ahmed, Head of poker partnerships at Twitch, had highlighted the reasons behind their sponsorship of the unique competition, saying:

"We wanted to shine a light on our incredible poker community. Since we know that our users are very supportive of charitable events, this was a perfect way to build awareness for the poker scene, while raising money for good causes.”

He added:

“By using popular Twitch personalities, we're hoping to expose entertaining poker content to an audience who may not be familiar with the game, while driving awareness of the poker category in general."

Prior to the charity tournament kicking off, Lex Veldhuis had told PokerNews:

"It’s gonna be really interesting to play against people who are not only relatively new to the game, but also have a huge fan base watching. They’re all Twitch legends in their own right so I think people will be trying their best with everyone watching."

With popular streamer Jeff Gross in the commentary box along with David Tuchman of WSOP livestream fame, each of the contestants would be hosting the jcarverpoker stream on their own channels as well, giving poker a boost across a wide range of communities…

Byron ‘Reckful’ Bernstein, a World of Warcraft and Hearthstone expert for many years, and who can boast over 600,000 followers on his Twitch TV channel, certainly enjoyed his weekend of poker, tweeting…

…although in case you’re wondering, ‘wtf? that’s not him!’ ...here’s the real Reckful (right) with the most popular poker streamer ever – and the main man behind the charity livestream, Jason ‘jcarverpoker’ Somerville (on the left)

Pre-event Somerville had said:

"Poker is a fantastic vehicle for charity worldwide and the idea of having Twitch broadcasters battling it out on the felt for their favorite cause seemed like a great idea. It took a lot for this to all come together, but I’m glad to be a part of it! I predict the event will be a ton of fun and incredibly entertaining."

It seems everyone else agreed, Mitch ‘MitchJonez’ Jones joining ‘itshafu’ on the winner’s podium…