Poker is hot for fund-raisers

By Timothy J. Lavallee/ tlavallee@cnc.com
Friday, January 28, 2005

Move over Las Vegas Night. No-limit Texas hold 'em poker is all the rage.

There are three such tournaments scheduled for three straight days in Malden, with the likelihood of more.

Televised shows about poker are getting high ratings and have found niche audiences the way professional wrestling has. It's also more interesting to watch than golf.

Celebrities even get in on the action in a celebrity version on the Bravo network. And there are crossovers, like Cambridge native Ben Affleck, a Hollywood star who won a poker tournament last year.

Now it's time for regular Malden residents to feel like the stars and the poker pros.

First up is the tournament held by the Realtors Against Poverty, who are hosting its fund-raiser at the Malden Irish American Club on West Street on Thursday, Feb. 17. A fund-raiser for Malden Pop Warner is having one on Feb. 18 at the Malden Moose hall on Broadway.

That is followed on Saturday, Feb. 19 by the Malden Access TV's tournament to raise money for its Youth Channel.

Organizer and MATV board president Kevin Duffy said the MATV tourney is the only one in town that will have a televised final table.

"What makes it so appealing is that any two cards can win," he said. The players are dealt two cards and use five "community" cards to make their best hand with five of the seven in play.

The no-limit format allows anyone to go "all-in" at any time in the game, meaning they can bet all their chips at on one hand.

"At any moment you could go down," Duffy said.

But it's fake money of course. Each tournament has its own entry fee that buys a certain dollar amount in chips. In this case, the money is being used for expanding the Youth Channel, MATV's initiative to show school-age kids the inner workings of television production.

"It gives them a good hobby. It expands their skills," Duffy said. "If you have a kid in an editing booth doing something, he's not out on the streets doing something that is going to cost the city money."

The benefits don't end there, either, said Youth Channel coordinator Alicia Brugnoli.

"It teaches them a lot skills, like writing skills, listening skills," she sad. "They're thinking more critically about television. They learn to be more of an active watcher than a passive watcher."

Then there are the intangible benefits; ones that aren't measured with pencil and paper.

"One of the things that I find with people, especially with younger children is that they find out how to talk about themselves and define themselves," said MATV Executive Director Jeff Hansell.

The challenge for improving the program is two-fold, Brugnoli said.

"I think the biggest problem is retaining kids," she said. "I have a lot of my kids who have basketball and will come after basketball. It's hard to get a group of kids to come to work on a show. The other idea is to promote the Youth Channel, because a lot of people don't know about it."

Hansell said he hopes the Youth Channel can become a vehicle through which MATV can reach deeper into the community.

"We need to find a way, in part through, youth to find more training opportunities," Hansell said. "We'd like to have a permanent internship and training classes for students at Malden High School."

Brugnoli hopes to see the channel mature into well-developed, issue-oriented programming.

"I would like to have more programs in social change," she said. "To make programs that are more applicable to them and to address issues that affect kids today such as peer pressure, drugs and even the election."