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A 67-year-old Canadian Buddhist and skilled poker player Scott Wellenbach recently walking away from the table with US$671,240 after finishing in third place at a poker championship in the Bahamas.
Unlike other poker winners, Wellenbach doesn't keep the money, he donates it to Buddhist charities.
Wellenbach, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, works as translator of Buddhist texts in Tibetan and Sanskrit when he’s not doubling down at the poker table, as a member of the Nalanda Translation Committee, founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Most of his poker winnings have been directed toward Buddhist charities, in particular those that support women’s education. According to media reports at the time, Wellenbach was still deciding on a worthy cause for his latest windfall.
“I made the decision last time actually a week after I did well in Barcelona,” Wellenbach said of his previous success some 18 months earlier, when he finished 17th in a poker contest, walking away with US$92,000. “At the time it went to support Buddhist nuns in Nepal. . . . I’m very interested in Buddhism myself, but also women's education is what this was about. I think they're both very important factors and causes in the world.”
(sources: Poker News and Buddhist Door)
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