#PNWPokerCal Planner for 16 August 2017

Posted on by

Help Scott Ranstrom Get Back to Poker

Photograph from KATU.com

The 69-year-old Vietnam veteran considers himself a jack-of-all trades, someone who can learn a new skill just by watching. He spent years as a commercial roofer. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t do drugs. “My biggest crime in life is playing poker, and I love doing that,” he said.

For those who don’t know the story, almost exactly four months ago, Scott Ranstrom was sitting in a Denny’s on Southeast 82nd Avenue just south of the Portland city line using their wi-fi playing online poker and doing some other tasks, when a man he’d never met walked in, doused Ranstrom with gasoline, and lit him on fire. Ranstrom spent two months in a coma, and he’s still in the hospital, with a long road of recovery and rehabilitation ahead.

Nearly every article since the attack has mentioned his love of playing poker, and the update that ran on KATU the other night was no exception, with Ranstrom telling  reporter Keaton Thomas that he’s going back to playing poker once he gets out of the hospital. It also mentioned that his GoFundMe site, set up to cover extensive medical expenses, had raised just $40K of a $100K goal.

Portland Poker Championship Series III and Texas Hold’em For the Cure 2017

I’m keeping both of these up front here in the Planner for the next two weeks.

The PPCS3 starts Saturday at noon at Portland Meadows with a $20K GTD tournament. It’s a Freezeout with a $165 buyin. No rebuy, no addon, and a 25K starting stack. Everyone gets a pass from me for the first game (as a player at Meadows pointed out the other day, I do have the champion’s trophy for the last Portland series!) but the point system has been corrected, so that’s not likely to happen again.

Sunday at noon is game two of four, this time at Final Table. Another $20K GTD, using the format for Final Table’s monthly First Friday tournaments: $80 buyin with $80 live rebuy and $40 addon.

The annual poker benefit for the Susan G. Komen Sleep In for the Cure fundraiser is two weeks from Friday. Top prize is a trip for two to Las Vegas. It’s a $50 buyin, at the iHeartRADIO Portland Lounge in Tigard, with proceeds going to fight breast cancer.

Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard

Just one new name on the leaderboard this week (and by “new” I mean according to the ever-changing set of arbitrary rules I use to put it together): Jeffrey Farnes of Salem got his first Hendon Mob rating with an impressive 15th place at the Ante Up World Championship at Thunder Valley outside of Sacramento. The $1,650 buyin event busted the $500K GTD with almost 500 entries, The numbers at the top look like some sort of deal was made at the unofficial final table; the player who came to the table as chip leader walked away with more for 8th place than anyone except the champion.

Kindah Sakkal from WSOP.com

Max Young of Seaside, Dylan Linde from Couer d’Alene, and Kindah Sakkhal of Bothell represent all three states in the US Pacific Northwest and they were all in Cherokee North Carolina for the World Series of Poker Circuit stop that included the Global Casino Championship. Max cashed in the stop’s Main Event for 28th place (knocked out by the eventual winner, Harry Arutyunyan), and Kindah went on to take 4th place in the 1,022 entry tournament. Linde took 6th place in the Global Poker Championship (from 124 entries who had to qualify through the WSOP point system).

Rounding out this week’s top scorers, Seattle’s Matt Affleck fell just short of a win in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Purple Chip Bounty.

Racist Crap

I’m an old white guy. But in my younger days, I lived for a few years with a woman who grew up in Compton during the Watts riots. We were sometimes harassed on the streets of “liberal” Eugene back in the ’80s, and other stuff happened when I wasn’t around. The best man at my parent’s wedding was interned during World War II until a couple years before he met my father in grade school. I’ve got family with Japanese roots and others with African-American adoptees. 30 years ago, skinheads living around the corner from my house beat an Ethiopian student named Mulugeta Seraw to death with a baseball bat a half mile away. So please, if you’ve got some sort of “explanation” for why you think the events in Charlottesville last weekend were somehow not racist or that there are “many sides,” or that I’ve been “fed” propaganda, save your energy for someone else, because the only thing you’re going to convince me of is that you’re a racist. Even if nobody died or was hurt last weekend, it would still have been a bunch of racists gathering to protest the removal of monuments to racists who fought to preserve slavery. 

Suggesting that after I’ve made it to the age of 55, after running for the Oregon Legislature more than two decades ago, after writing a political blog for several years, and after two years of research for a book on Democratic Party foreign policy, that you’ve got some special insight into politics that I haven’t developed is not only insulting it’s stupid.

And really, messaging me that you’ve “lost all respect” for me because I won’t bother to watch your pro-Nazi videos just convinces me I could care less about your opinion, Mike H. George McGovern dropped bombs on Nazis.

With 1972 Democratic presidential candidate Senator George McGovern, at the 2007 McGovern Conference in Mitchell, South Dakota.

Ready For My Close-Ups

A spate of tournament series are coming to the Northwest and Northern California/Nevada in short order. They’ll all be covered in Only a Day Away as they get closer, but here’s a brief look ahead at events less than 10 hours drive (according to Apple Maps) from my house:

Only a Day Away

  • The Bicycle Casino’s Legends of Poker is closing in on its last couple of weeks. Entry flights for Mega Millions XVII run through Monday. Two daily flights for $160 buy-in with a $100 addon (5% of players advance to Day 2 on 22 August)); and weekend flights for $550 with 10% advancing. Monday and Tuesday are $460 Mega Satellites for direct entry into Day 2 (starting with 60+ big blinds). Tuesday is a $550 PL Mixed game (PLO, Big O, and Triple Draw Badugi, $30K GTD), with a $1,100 buyin $100K GTD NLHE tournament on Wednesday and a $50K NLHE Nounty tournament (same buyin) the next day. Wednesday is also the first of six flights for the Big HORSE tournament (with Big O instead of Limit Omaha Hi-Lo). There’s a $100K GTD for that. The first three flights are $240 with 10% getting to the money, and the final three are $350, with 15% making Day 2.
  • The Main Event for the Golden Gates Casino Colorado Poker Championship Summer is this weekend with flights on Friday and Saturday. $1,100 buyin.
  • Friday is also Day 1A for the Deerfoot Inn & Casino Summer Super Stack Main Event. It’s C$1,500 with three entry days and ends on the day of the eclipse (21 August).
  • The Venetian August Extravaganza runs through Sunday. Friday and Saturday are flights into an $80K GTD NLHE tournament with a buyin of $340.
  • Sunday at noon is a Crazy Pineapple tournament at Eugene’s Beach Poker Club. $75 buyin with $20 addon. You can call the club early to get a 1K bonus. A week from Sunday is their big Crazy Pineapple tournament!
  • Cactus Pete’s is in Nevada, but nowhere near Vegas. It’s just about due south of Twin Falls Idaho, in Jackpot. They host Pokermania for five days starting next today, with 12 events.
  • The first Muckleshoot Summer Classic Satellite is tonight at 7pm. One out of ten players ($125 buyin) gets a choice between two packages of seats in the series. The satellites run weekly through 6 September. Sunday at noon is the first of four Mega Satellites; $225 gets you into contention for entries in all five days’ events. At noon the next Sunday (27 August) there’s a $300 Deepstack).
  • WPTDeepstacks returns to Reno Atlantis tomorrow for 12 days of action, inclluding a $200K GTD Main Event. This Saturday and Sunday are $400 flights to a $50K GTD NLHE.
  • Next Wednesday is the start of the Horseshoe Poker Classic in Council Bluffs, Iowa (across the river from the Omaha airport). Its Main Event has five flights between 23 and 26 August, with Day 2 on 27 August.
  • In just a week, Heartland Poker Tour returns to Ameristar East Chicago, which is always one of their bigger stops.
  • At 9:30am the morning of 27 August, Lucky Chances Casino holds its monthly $20K GTD to first place tournament. $375 including the staff appreciation.
  • The monthly No Chop at the Top tournament at Tulalip Resort Casino is at 11am on 27 August. $230 (including dealer addon) with $5K added.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!