Two stories with a charitable tone including PokerStars raising $19,400 for the T.J.Martell Foundation for Leukaemia, Cancer and AIDS Research at the 3rd Annual Chad Brown Memorial Poker Tournament, and Dan Shak is matching donations up to $35,000 at Raising For Effective Giving.
The 3rd Annual Chad Brown Memorial Poker Tournament raised $19,400 for the T.J.Martell Foundation for Leukaemia, Cancer and AIDS Research after a strong turnout by PokerStars Team Pros at the PokerStars Festival New Jersey.
Daniel Negreanu hosted the $200 buy-in event with unlimited $100 rebuys. 87 players took a seat, and 214 re-entries resulted in a prize pool of $38,800; 50% of which went towards the charity.
Twitch sensation, Jason Somerville, won the event. He picked up a PokerStars Championship Bahamas Main Event Seat for his troubles. Somerville beat fellow PokerStars employee Jennifer Shahade in heads-up action. The MindSport Ambassador took a Poker Players Championship (PPC) Aruba seat for finishing second.
Other notables to make the final table included Reality TV star Robert “Boston Rob” Mariano who finished third picking up a brand new poker table. Vanessa Selbst won a WPT500 seat for her fifth place finish. Natasha Barbour won a Heartland Poker Tour (HPT) package for her sixth place finish, and Fatima Moreira de Melo won a VIP World Poker Tour (WPT) experience for finishing seventh.
some mountain man in #runitup gear shipped the @Downtownchad Memorial Charity tournament! a great event for a fantastic cause @PokerStarsNJ pic.twitter.com/GRY8H7pkhx
— Jason Somerville (@JasonSomerville) 4 November 2016
Jason Acosta Wins The PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event
The curtain has closed at the end of PokerStars return to live action in the US after Jason Acosta won the $1,100 buy-in PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event.
The festival didn’t haul in vast numbers of players, but it was a great marker for PokerStars in their journey to rebuild their live tournament brand in the States after a five-year absence.
Acosta beat, arguably the most in-form online poker player since New Jersey returned to the regulated scene in Michael Gagliano, to win the $38,220 first prize. Acosta showed the power of the online qualification route by winning his seat in a 5,000 StarsCoins online qualifier.
208 players entered the event, and Matt Affleck finished in the fifth position.
Final Table Results
1. Jason Acosta – $38,220
2. Michael Gagliano – $28,116
3. Eli Kim – $20,683
4. David Johnston – $15,215
5. Matt Affleck – $11,193
6. Sridhar Sangannagari – $8,234
7. Rocco Dicondina – $6,057
8. Peter Smyth – $4,455
Dimi and Dan Shak in Raising For Effective Giving Push
If you want to do your bit for charity, this month then head over to Raising for Effective Giving (REG), the meta-charity that focuses on raising funds for effective charities as discovered by Givewell or through their own internal research.
Poker player and investor, Dan Shak, along with a person who wishes to remain anonymous going by the name Dimi, have promised to match any donation you may give to REG to the tune of $35,00, thus doubling the effectiveness of your dollar.
Dimi, who became aware of REG through the work of Liv Boeree, Igor Kurganov and Philipp Gruissem believes a matching challenge will motivate more people to get involved. Shak said he joined the matching challenge because he is a big fan of the work REG is doing.
Griffin Benger, who finished seventh at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event Final Table, was wearing a REG patch. In 2015, fourth place finisher Max Steinberg also supported the meta-charity, and the 2014 winner Martin Jacobson donated $250,000 of his $10m first prize to REG.
50% of Jacobson’s donations that year went to effective animal charities. If you want to follow the Swede in doing the most good you can do for the animals then now is a great time.
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is a non-profit created to help find the most effective animal charities in the world. If you would like to donate towards their research, they also have a matching challenge running through until the end of the year.
The Dimi and Dan Shak matching challenge ends at the end of November.
Here are the links if you want to dig deep:
