March 21 (Reuters) - The biggest donor in this U.S.

election cycle is Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian hedge fund owner

who started off as a professional poker player and is now a

major investor in TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance.

Philadelphia-based Yass has donated more than $46 million to

Republican causes so far in the 2024 election cycle, data from

political donations tracker OpenSecrets shows.

The funds have gone to support former rivals of Donald Trump

for the Republican presidential nomination, as well as a raft of

groups supporting school choice, programs that use taxpayer

dollars to send students to private and religious schools.

Yass, 65, was thrust into the spotlight this month after

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, reversed course on

his preference for banning TikTok, saying that a ban would hurt

some children and only strengthen Meta Platforms' ( META )

Facebook.

Trump made the comments days after he met Yass at a

gathering of the conservative Club for Growth donor group in

Florida.

The U-turn on TikTok amid a major cash crunch led to

speculation that Trump may be trying to court Yass.

Trump says the pair only met for "a few minutes," and

did not discuss TikTok but instead talked about education.

Trump has been significantly outraised on funding by

Democratic President Joe Biden and faces hostility from many

traditional Republican donors, all while scrambling for money to

pay off around a half-billion dollars in legal judgments.

Yass, who leads Pennsylvania-based global hedge fund

Susquehanna International Group and whose net worth Forbes puts

at around $27 billion, has not donated to Trump.

He did, however, give money to support four of Trump's

former opponents for the Republican presidential nomination:

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,

Senator Tim Scott and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie,

a major Trump critic.

Yass has not previously donated to Trump. A spokesperson for

Yass declined to comment for this article.

Yass' political contributions have soared from the levels he

spent in previous elections, OpenSecrets data shows. In the

entire 2016 election cycle, for example, Yass and his wife

donated just over $5 million - a ninth of his donations in the

current cycle, which wraps up with the Nov. 5 general election.

His donations this cycle have included some $16 million to

the Club for Growth Action, a super PAC funding group linked to

the fiscally conservative Club for Growth non-profit. The Club

for Growth is also against the TikTok ban.

To be sure, Yass and the Club for Growth have over the years

also donated to many members of Congress who support banning

TikTok, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio.

POKER, TRADING AND SCHOOLS

The son of two accountants and a math major himself, Yass

went to Las Vegas after college and played poker professionally,

Yass says in a video posted by Susquehanna on YouTube. He later

moved to Philadelphia and worked as an options trader on the

floor in 1981.

A passion for betting and probability seems to permeate much

of what he does.

"Sometimes I find myself at a race track literally trying to

make $2 on an idea that I have," Yass, bespectacled and sitting

in front of what appears to be a row of traders at their

computers, said in the Susquehanna video.

In the political sphere, Yass is laser-focused on the issue

of school choice programs, according to interviews with

politicians who know him and fellow donors.

"He is truly a libertarian. His main interest is promoting

school choice. That's what motivates Jeff," said Frayda Levin, a

Republican donor who knows Yass and sees him at events at the

Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Libertarians typically support maximizing individual rights

and minimizing the role of government.

In addition to having poured millions into supporting school

choice on a political level, Yass and his wife Janine Yass, with

whom he has four children, award monetary prizes to education

providers.

School choice programs have gained wide appeal in recent

years as some parents have become disgruntled with the state of

U.S. public education, for reasons ranging from underfunding to

concerns about what is taught in classrooms.

However, some Democrats view the push to use state funds

for private and religious schools with suspicion, saying they

are attempts by Republicans to weaken public education while

further enriching wealthy families.