Who wouldn't believe that this actor, stand-up comedian made a big splash at the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating the poker instructor and poker icon Annie Duke in the first round while entertaining the audience with his table-talk and antics.
Brad Garrett, also played at the World Series of Poker, where he joined in the main event and the Ante Up for Africa charity poker tournament. Brad Garrett is now the host of his very own charity poker event, the All-In For All Good Celebrity Poker Tournament at Commerce Casino last Saturday, May 30. The $350 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Tournament will benefit the Maximum Hope Foundation and the Dream Foundation.
Brad Garrett with his group of the comedy actors and actresses merged for the benefit of Dream Foundation and Maximum Hope Foundation's All-In For All Good Celebrity Poker Tournament. Jason Alexander, Ray Romano, Kevin Nealon, Teri Hatcher, Mimi Rogers, Joely Fisher are among the few who brought the humor and a heart on the poker tables.
Other celebrities like: Cheryl Hines, Michael Chiklis, Hank Azaria,Christopher Cross, Robert Dav, Nicole Sullivan come up and join the fun.
The charity event will also feature a silent and live auction, and tournament prizes include $10,000 in final-table prize money, along with electronic prizes, and travel prizes provided by event sponsor American Airlines.
The Charity tournament began at 1 in the afternoon, and also feature a silent live auction. The Celebrity Poker Tournament prizes are the following:
1st Place: $7,000 cash
2nd Place: $ 2,500 cash
3rd Place: $5,000 cash plus a seat at World Poker Tournament
4th to 10th Place: Prizes courtesy of SONY and Apple
Prizes order to be determined in SONY and Apple:
DVD Home Theater System from SONY
LCD Flat Screen TV from SONY
Cybershot Digital Camera from SONY
Blue-ray Disc Player from SONY
Location Free Base Station from SONY
Handycam Camcorder from SONY
And Blue iPod with $100 iTunes certificate from APPLE
In the interview of the cardplayer staff Ryan Luchessi to Brad Garrett talked about using his love of poker to help others:
Card Player Ryan Luchessi: First thing’s first, tell me about your upcoming charity tournament. What can you tell players and fans out there who would be interested in playing?
Brad Garrett: Four years ago I started my own charity, it’s called the Maximum Hope Foundation…It’s been very successful, it’s a grassroots, small foundation, all non-profit. We have one employee, and everyone else is on a volunteer basis. We help many families during the year that are just trying to meet daily expenses, from rent to food to bills to gas.
A lot of these families that have to contribute to their health insurance costs when they are terminally ill, even at 20 percent, they are literally wiped out. In this economy, with people not working, we have just become overwhelmed with people who need help. So, we’ve teamed up with the Dream Foundation, which is another foundation that I’ve worked with for years that is almost like a sister foundation of ours as far as the fact that they help families that have terminally ill members that are 18 years and older. We decided to team up in an effort to raise as much money as we can for these families.
Card Player Ryan Luchessi: What direct help will the families benefiting from your foundation receive from the charity donations the tournament will raise?
Brad Garrett: There are so many people who need basic things right now, so we help them out with gas money to get to the hospital and the money they need for rent. One family didn’t have a washer and dryer with four kids. These are things that are truly priorities for these people. What is really great about it is that whatever is donated that week goes directly to help these families with gas cards, or electrical bills, or clothing. You can see what your contribution does immediately, and we let people know where they’re helping. It makes it very personal, and it makes it immediate, as these kinds of needs are.
Card Player Ryan Luchessi: Tell me a little bit about the atmosphere you expect for the night of charity event?
Brad Garrett: It’s going to be around-the-clock food and drinks, fun, and entertainment. There are going to be live bands, and a jazz trio. It’s going to be fun; it’s going to be loose. I mean, anybody can walk away with that $7,500 for first place. Not only that, but how many times are you going to have an opportunity to play next to Ray Romano and Michael Chiklis, or Kevin Nealon and Hank Azaria? We’re looking at a field of 200 people; we’re getting some great response, and I think it’s going to be a fun day. There’s going to be music, it’s going to be crazy, I know Ray’s going to be talking at me and dissing on me, and we just have a lot of fun. It’s a lot like our home game.
We’re all serious and average players who just like to have a good time…I mean, $350 for registration, how may times do you go to a casino and blow that in an hour? It goes to a great cause, and it’s totally tax-deductible…Fox, the network that my show is on has been great, Sony pictures and television has been incredibly generous. It’s cool, because at the end of the day, this is what it’s all about.
Card Player Ryan Luchessi: How has your prior involvement in poker with the WSOP and NBC Heads-Up event opened up opportunities for you to play poker and help charities at the same time?
Brad Garrett: Ray and I have a monthly home game that we have played in for years, and we’ve done golf tournaments before, but we wanted do something that we all love for charity, so we decided to do a poker tournament. Commerce Casino has been incredibly helpful in helping us get this together. I would love to do whatever I can for charity via poker. I’m like one of those guys that throws around the football on Sunday and dreams of playing, except for me it’s poker. I’ve always loved it, I’ve played for 20 years and I’m still pretty darn bad. The bottom line is I just love the game, and it’s one of the few things I can do that makes me forget the other things I’m dealing with. It’s my kind of sport, I don’t have to sweat and I can have a hot dog, so any sport like that is a fun thing.
Like stand up, the reason I love poker is because every night is different. I have no right beating Annie Duke, but if you get the right cards, even a neophyte like me can have some fun. I just love the game; this is something I would like to do as far as helping charities and it is something I would like to get better at. My heroes are the Gus Hansens, the Hellmuths, and the Annie Dukes, these people who I think are wonderful at what they do, and I just love watching it. It’s my sport of choice.
Maximum Hope is aiming to help the families with incurable ill children, and the Dream Foundation is the only organization that handouts wishes for incurable ill adults.
What better course of action to raise money than with poker and a whole lot of laughs with these celebrity comedian actors and actresses!
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