$5 per retweet pledge ends up garnering $10,000 in donations for Stack KL fund
One of the best poker stories of 2021 played out over the weekend, and left Johnnie “Vibes” Moreno a little bit shorter in the bankroll department.
The poker community came together on Sunday in an effort to raise funds for fellow player KL Cleeton. Cleeton, a quadriplegic, wants to travel to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas this fall, but his physical condition prevents him from flying or traveling in a standard automobile.
Veronica Brill led the charge to raise funds for a custom van that can allow Cleeton to make the trip from Illinois to the WSOP this summer. Brill’s charity stream aired on Sunday, with many in the poker community contributing to a GoFundMe account dedicated to raising money for a van for Cleeton.
Brill organized the fundraiser, which stood at just short of $47,000 of a $75,000 goal as of Monday morning. A good chunk of that $47K came from one particular donator.
Johnnie Vibes offers $5 per retweet
Brill’s “Stack KL” fund is still up and running on GoFundMe. Visiting the fundraiser site reveals a well-known name as the top donator to the cause.
Johnnie “Vibes” Moreno offered to donate $5 per retweet of a Sunday post, which rapidly gained momentum after going live on Sunday afternoon:
“Donating $5 per retweet. Let’s send KL to the moon in his new van,” Moreno wrote in the tweet.”
Moreno’s tweet got plenty of support from the poker community, hitting more than 1,800 retweets by Monday morning. Around 18 hours after the original tweet, Moreno went ahead and rounded the donation up to $10,000.
The retweets for a good cause represented a monetary gamble from Moreno. Some of his fellow poker players were trying to get Elon Musk and Steve Aoki to retweet.
Doug Polk might have summed it up best in relation to Moreno’s generosity:
“I'll be real, I’m not a big VIBES guy. But being willing to pay $5 per tweet for an unknown amount of retweets.... that takes balls,” Polk posted in his retweet. “Please retweet this guys. Let's get this thing to 1k retweets.”
Moreno posted a Twitter video after the $10,000 donation that summed up his effort to contribute to the cause:
“I thought it was a great cause,” Moreno said in the video. "I’ve met KL before, I really like him. I think he’s a great person in the community.”
“I thought two or three dollars would be weird math, so I just rounded up to $5, not really thinking it through too much,” Vibes went on to say. “And doing the math, and realizing there are some heavy hitters out there that could be retweeting me.”
“And that’s what happened. Phil Hellmuth unblocked me and retweeted it. A lot of people retweeted it.”
Cleeton said he’ll be putting Moreno’s face on the van, which will certainly stand out as perhaps the signature vehicle of the 2021 WSOP.
Moreno’s generosity earned widespread praise for the cash game player and vlogger from the poker community:
“Truly a hero today,” Brill tweeted. “Stood by his word and was incredibly generous. I thought highly of him before but today, he's on a pedestal in my heart.”
Featured image source: Flickr/World Poker Tour
