Heartbroken, devastated, and bankrupt, Dianna Donofrio was alone in Las Vegas. With a wounded pride and an uncertain future, she wasn’t sure what to do, but she wasn’t ready to admit defeat.
The 62-year-old woman with Midwestern roots has come a long way since that dark period of her life, but she credits poker as one of the reasons she survived her difficult times. Last week, she was named the Nevada state director of the Poker Players Alliance.
Donofrio used to be a successful business owner of a nail salon in Indiana. But after she visited Las Vegas for a conference three decades ago, her life changed forever.
At first, she thought it was her fairytale ending. She met a man. She fell in love. He promised her marriage and happiness. She sold her Indiana business and moved out to Las Vegas to stay. But just like that, he was gone. And so was her money.
“When I got out here, there was no note. He up and left and cleared out my bank account,” said Donofrio.
Her mother begged her to come back home to Indiana. But Donofrio refused.
“Pride does certain things to women,” Donofrio said. “You don’t want to go back. You don’t want to admit that you were star-struck and totally in love, and let somebody do this to you. But it happened.”
So, with just $100 in her pocket, she decided to stay and try to survive.
“I thought, ‘I’ve got to win money,’ so I went to the Frontier [casino],” she said. She remembered sitting on her late father’s lap as a child, learning poker, and she knew she could be a winner at it. So she sat down at a seven-card stud table on a Friday night and didn’t leave the casino until Monday morning, $400 richer for her efforts.
But it wasn’t just her poker skills that impressed the staff at the Frontier. With a warm laugh and a personable attitude, they decided to offer her a job as a hostess on that very Monday morning.
“I turned my last hundred dollars into a new career,” said Donofrio.
After starting out as a hostess for the Frontier, Donofrio has worked for a number of casinos both in Las Vegas and in California as a floorperson and as a satellite tournament director. She helped Jack McClelland put on the first tournament in Commerce Casino’s history and she has been involved with a number of World Series.
Today, she is the public relations director of DGHoldings, a proprietary software company. But she has always kept an eye on the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the non-profit organization whose mission is “to establish favorable laws that provide poker players with a secure, safe, and regulated place to play.”
Donofrio has an extensive background in politics. While in Indiana, she worked on a number of campaigns at the both the local and state level, including congressional and gubernatorial races. She was appointed secretary of the Democratic state convention, as well as regional director of Southern Indiana for the Democratic state committee.
So when she saw an organization spring up that involved both poker and politics, she felt uniquely qualified to help out. She contacted the PPA and offered her services. They, in turn, offered her the state director position.
“The PPA is fortunate to have over one million dedicated members, and even more fortunate that Dianna is one of them,” said former New York Senator, Alfonse D’Amato, the Chairman of the PPA. “As Nevada’s PPA State Director, Dianna will help strengthen the PPA’s efforts both nationally and at the state level. We are proud to have her as part of the PPA team.”
Although it is a volunteer position, Donofrio says she is dedicated to working as hard as she can to increase the presence of the PPA in Nevada.
“I think there’s only 22,000 people in the whole state of Nevada who have signed up for the Poker Players Alliance, and we’re bigger than that,” said Donofrio. “We’re considered the gaming capital of the world, so we need to make a bigger presence.”
She plans on recruiting a representative from each county to serve on an advisory committee. She encourages members and people interested in helping out to contact her at nv@pokerplayersalliance.org.
She also believes that the PPA is poised for some great moments in the times ahead, especially in terms of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which makes it illegal for banks, credit card companies, and payment processors like PayPal to transfer funds from gamblers to online casinos, and vice versa.
“I think that we are on the cusp of the reversal of the UIGEA bill, I really do,” Donofrio said. “I really think that the doors are going to open for online poker again.”
For more information, check out the PPA website.
