[UMTerp]

FWIW, here's my idea. I just don't know who to send it to.

I don't play anywhere but Stars, but I assume Party, UB, Paradise, etc. all have some kind of frequent player system where you can exchange "points" for shirts and stuff. If anybody wants to steal my idea to send to one of the other poker sites, feel free:

Lee,

I had what I think is a really great idea last night while I was playing and watching TV, and I wanted to run it by you. I can’t think of a reason off the top of my head why it wouldn’t work, and I think it’d benefit a lot of people. As a warning, I have a feeling this e-mail may be on the lengthy side, but please take the time to consider this idea.

I play quite a few hands at Stars and accumulate FPP points at a pretty healthy rate. I’m sure there are hundreds of other players that are in the same boat as me too. I already have 3 sets of poker chips, about 20 decks of Kem cards, all the books you offer, and I could wear a different Pokerstars sweatshirt every day of the week. I agree that the FPP satellite entries are nice touch and a great way for frequent players to use their thousands and thousands of points. I had another idea while I was watching CNN last night though.

Since you guys give away nice merchandise and real-money tourney entries in exchange for FPP points, I think you’ll agree that FPPs have some monetary value. When making a purchase or entering a satellite, I usually assume that 1000 points are worth between $15 and $20. (1.5 to 2 cents per point.) Whether that rate is correct or not, I don’t know, but you can determine what it is.

OK, finally – my idea!! With what’s currently going on in New Orleans, I think it’d be great if you let players exchange their points for a donation to the Red Cross or some relief fund for the folks down there that got displaced. Even if it’s at a reduced rate, say 1 cent per point, I can think of many reasons why this would be worthwhile to consider. I know I’d rather turn 25000 points into $250 for the people down there than buy 20 more long-sleeved baseball shirts for myself.

Pros I can think of:

- It’s obviously a worthy cause.
- I think many players would utilize this feature, and if you do it at 1 cent per point, you can get players to use their points at a “reduced” rate.
- I’d imagine you’ll raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity, which you can use for promotional purposes.

The only drawback I can think come up with is that your programming department will have to spend a little time to implement the feature. The way I envision it is that you’d just have a big button in the main lobby that says something like “Click Here to Donate to Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort”. Then the users would click on it, a pop-up window would come up (similar to the cashier or FPP Store windows), and the user would be prompted with something like “How many points would you like to exchange for a Red Cross donation?” They’d type in a number, and then it’d say something like “Thank you for your donation of $3.67. $12,045.75 has been donated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina by Pokerstars players this month. 367 FPP points have been deducted from you account.”

Now I realize that a lot of your customer base is from other countries who may not care about New Orleans one bit, and the “charity of the month” or whatever could rotate depending on what’s going on in the world. I just thought that this would be a win-win for everyone, and that Katrina victims would be the obvious pick to be the beneficiary for the time being.

What do you think? Feasible?

Thanks for your time and consideration of this idea.

-Phil XXXXXX
(UMTerp)