Canada’s Lane Anderson has decided to combine his passion for poker with the noble pursuit of charitable fundraising as part of this upcoming weekend’s annual Extra Life charity drive. Lane will be joining tens of thousands of gamers in the widely-renowned effort to raise money for sick and injured children. Better known within the poker community as the Editor of PokerNews Canada, Anderson will be “taking his talents to Twitch,” where he’ll be live-streaming his online poker play for 24 hours straight with a goal of raising $5,000 for the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation.
With a starting bankroll of $300, Anderson plans to start playing online poker at PokerStars from 8pm Mountain Time on Saturday night November 4, until 7pm the following evening (Sunday, November 5). Eagle-eyed readers might notice that the above amounts to “only” 23 straight hours of play, but with Daylight Saving Time ending in North America over the weekend, he’ll actually be playing “twice” between 1-2am. Beyond soliciting donations from the viewing audience, Lane has also committed to donating any of his profits from the 24-hour session to the cause.
This weekend, I’m playing poker 24 hours straight (and streaming it all on @Twitch) to raise money for @ACHFKids. https://t.co/yCkyeXJaQC pic.twitter.com/C3n3b7oNa7
— Lane Anderson (@Lane_Anderson) October 30, 2017
There are tons of worthy causes out there to play for, so I asked Lane what specifically motivated him to take part in an initiative that benefits his local children’s hospital. As it turns out, he has two longtime friends that he used to go skateboarding with as teenagers. “One of them, Jesse, had some serious heart-related scares as a kid and spent a lot of time in the children’s hospital in Calgary. The two of them have been doing this Extra Life thing for six years now, spending 24 hours playing video games together and collecting donations… I decided to participate too, and bring this initiative to the poker world. My wife has been very supportive; she’s packing up and taking herself and our three kids up to my mom’s place for the weekend so I can do this.”
While he will mostly be playing in No-Limit Hold’em tournaments with buy-ins of $11 or less, Anderson will also be playing in any Kansas City Lowball (2-7 NL single draw) events that will be running during that time, as he’s a huge fan of that particular poker variant. Interestingly, despite a good deal of experience in the poker world, as a longtime member of the poker media corps, he’s never actually live streamed his online play before. In his own words, “I’m not particularly good at poker, if we’re being honest,” but Anderson plans to liven up his broadcast #forthefans with a slew of special guests, who will be joining him both in-person and online. Lane revealed to me that among the scheduled guests will be his aforementioned friend Jesse, as well as popular PokerNews live reporter Aleeyah Jadavji. Other well-known “poker guests” are lined up as well, but he prefers to keep their names under wraps for now.
Since its inception in 2008, the Extra Life charity drive has raised in excess of $30 million to benefit patients in the 170 Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. As per their website, “Donations stay local to fund critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable care.”
While having announced that he’ll be doing the live stream just one day ago, grassroots support for Anderson’s initiative appears strong, with donations already starting to pour in via his dedicated fundraising page. Those interested can head there to donate, and Anderson has also committed to directly passing along any donations made via transfers to his online poker accounts at PokerStars (85FastLane), 888poker (85FastLane), and partypoker (FastLane85).
To watch Lane’s broadcast live, visit his Twitch channel.
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