Over the last two weeks, poker players have been flocking to online poker as a means of entertainment in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, at least one operator has found a way to help the cause by working directly with a charity battling the pandemic while expanding their offering to players.

GGPoker has pledged a donation to the University Health Network’s Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation. The donation comes from .5% of the prize pools in the ongoing High Roller Week on GGPoker and a matching amount from GGPoker themselves.

[ptable zone=”Global Poker Article Ad”][ptable zone=”GG Poker”][ptable zone=”NJ Online Poker Promos”]

High Roller Week is a series of tournaments on GGPoker running from March 22 through March 29 with buy-ins ranging from $250 up to $5,000 and total guarantees exceeding $9,000,000. GGPoker has guaranteed UHN that the donation will be no less than $100,000.

GGPoker High Roller Week Events

TIME (UTC)	BUY-IN	GUARANTEES
17:30	$210	$60,000 – $150,000
18:00	$500	$60,000 – $150,000
18:00	$5,000	$100,000 – $150,000
18:30	$525	$40,000 – $60,000
19:00	$1,000	$100,000 – $200,000
20:00	$1,000	$35,000 – $50,000
20:30	$500	$30,000 – $50,000
21:00	$500	$25,000 – $50,000
21:00	$1,000	$50,000 – $100,000
21:00	$5,000	$100,000 – $250,000
0:00	$1,000	$20,000
0:00	$5,000	$100,000 – $150,000

The news comes on the same week that GGPoker’s flagship Sunday tournament, the GGMasters, broke its own prize pool record. Two weeks ago, the GGMasters had a $300,000 guarantee and beat that number for the first time in the short history of the event with 2,260 players creating a $311,880 prize pool. In response to that, GGPoker upped the guarantee to $400,000 for this past Sunday. The 3,051 players that showed up pushed past the guarantee and ended up with a $421,038 prize pool.

GGPoker responded by once again upping the guarantee for Sunday, March 29 to $500,000. To avoid an overlay, the event will need to attract 3,624 players (before fees).

The site has also reduced fees on all regular tournaments, dropping from the standard 10% fee to 8%. This change was quietly rolled out to the site this week. Fees on bounty and high roller events will stay at 5%.

Beginning March 27, players will be able to play in hourly freerolls dubbed the #stayathome Freerolls. Each tournament has a $100 prize pool and there is no entry fee whatsoever. Players are restricted to playing in one of the freerolls per day.