PokerWorks

On Monday, April 28th, the Children’s Hospital Boston held their 4th annual charity poker tournament to help raise money for the kids.

I was asked to join them in the festivities and flew out to Boston for the event.

Annie, Howard, and I stayed at the Liberty Hotel, which used to be a jail! After I got past my fear of possible ghosts it was actually quite interesting and they have done a great job converting the building into a super nice hotel.

A car picked us up that evening and took us to the event at 60 State Street. It was fun listening to Howard and Annie discuss statistics about any and everything in the car on the way there. I also learned from them that the Boston Massacre happened right on the street where the tournament took place.

The event was so well organized with hors d'oeuvres, pasta chefs, a carving station and an open bar. As everyone arrived they mingled over food and drinks and stopped by to introduce themselves to Howard and Annie.

After that everyone picked their seat and I found myself seated next to Ben Mezrich, the author of Bringing Down the House and Busting Vegas as well as the screen writer for the hit movie ‘21’. He shared with me that he was currently working on several other screenplays, one of them an adaptation of his book Ugly Americans.

Another interesting side note – Kevin Spacey called Ben himself to tell him he wanted to make Bringing Down the House into a movie. That must have been an exciting phone call!

There were over 150 entrants and after about 3 hours it was down to the final table. Annie dealt to the final 9 and Howard emceed, giving everyone a play-by-play until the winner received his trophy.

You could tell everyone in attendance was thrilled to have them there and really enjoyed themselves.

There was also an auction that took place at the event and one woman told me she paid $8,000 for a lesson with Annie. She said she was very excited and planned to bring two of her clients with her to the lesson.

By the end of the night $695,500 was raised for the children and 150 poker players left the event happy to have helped and excited to have met the fantastic brother and sister poker duo.