Aid for earthquake victims in Haiti is coming in from an unlikely source–online poker rooms!

Several major Internet poker rooms are donating directly, making it easy for their patrons to donate or both.

Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com), for example, has been holding Aid for Haiti tournaments and donating a portion of the tournament profits to organizations providing aid.

Poker Stars (www.pokerstars.com) has been doing something similar with its Haiti Earthquake Relief tournaments.

Doyle’s Room (www.doylesroom.com), the online poker room flacked by poker pro Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson, announced it will be donating a portion of the proceeds from its regulary-scheduled Running of the Bounty tournament, where players try to knock out Brunson and other pros.

In addition, the Cake Poker Network, which provides poker software for a number of online poker rooms, is collecting donations at those rooms and then matching the donations.

Haiti, a small Caribbean island nation that is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, last week was struck by a powerful earthquake that measured a whopping 7.0 on the Richter Scale.

At least 100,000 people have been reported killed by the quake, while another 3 million people–one-third of Haiti’s population–have lost their homes.

Ironically, Haiti, unlike other Caribbean countries such as Antigua, Curacao and Jamaica, has not embraced online gambling and been a licensing point for online gambling sites, a factor which has contributed to the country’s poor economy.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)