It’s no secret that I like playing poker. It’s one of the best games in the world that combines strategy, decision making, competition, math, statistics, psychology, behavior, patterns, etc. And you can win a lot of money playing poker, so what’s not to like about it?
Every year, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held in Las Vegas. WSOP culminates with a $10,000 no-limit hold’em “Main Event”, which attracted 6,494 entrants in 2009 and had a first prize payout of $8,546,435! Through all of the 2009 tournaments during WSOP, they have currently awarded $173,335,842 in prize money. $173M!!
At the 2009 WSOP in Las Vegas, I was talking to one of my personal adviser/mentor Rafe Furst (who is also a professional poker player) about how to combine poker and good — we came up with an interesting idea…
WHAT IF WE COULD ENCOURAGE POKER PLAYERS DURING THE WSOP TO DONATE A PERCENTAGE OF THEIR WINNINGS TO CHARITY?
Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon have already started an initiative to make this happen called Bad Beat on Cancer (BBOC). Here’s how it started…
They asked their friends to pledge just 1% of their winnings at the WSOP Championship Event to the Prevent Cancer Foundation as a tax-deductible donation, resulting in enough money to fund a research grant for an entire year.
Since its inception six years ago, Bad Beat on Cancer™ (BBoC) has raised over $2 million for cancer prevention research and has grown to include other major poker tournaments, leagues and home games.
How can we take this to the next level? What else could we do to encourage more poker players to donate 1% of their winnings? Here’s what we came up with…
What if I enter the World Series of Poker and donate 100% of any potential winnings to charity, and encourage other players to pledge 1% or 100% as well. Here’s how I envision that it’ll work.
- I will post a project on kickstarter.com or chipmeup.com to raise $10,000 to play in the WSOG Main Event.
- Option A – I sell 100 shares for $100 each. Each shares equates to 1% of my potential winnings and each funder can pick whatever charity they want to donate for the potential winnings.
- Option B – I cover the cost and donate 50% of winnings to Bad Beat on Cancer and 50% to Ante up for Africa.
- To ensure that I play the best to my ability:
- I’ll be personally trained and coached by professional poker players Rafe Furst and Phil Gordon. And maybe Annie Duke if she agrees : )
- I’ll enter WSOP Circuit Events (on my own dime) like the Bayou Poker Challenge at Harrah’s New Orleans next month to get some practice.
- I’ll design and develop worldseriesofgood.com to encourage other poker players to donate a percentage of their WSOP winnings to Bad Beat on Cancer (Rafe and Phil’s charity), Ante up for Africa or DEF (Annie Duke’s charity), or any of the charities supported by Barry Greenstein. The website will allow players to make a pledge with the goal of raising over $1MM for the charities.
- During the WSOG, it will coincide with a one-day conference before the main event. Every poker player that pledges to WSOP a percentage of their winnings will receive 50% off their ticket prices. (Maybe in 2011?)
- The Big Idea is to encourage ALL poker players to donate 1%+ of ALL their online and offline tournament winnings to charity. Imagine if Full Tilt Poker allowed online players to automatically donate to charity? And all the WSOP tournaments allowed you to automatically pledge when you register?
- And of yeah, we’ll make small 1% patches (like the one Rafe is wearing below) and huge 100% patches that take up you entire shirt.
That’s pretty much it. Simple eh? We’re still in the idea generation phase so please leave any comments, suggestions, ideas below to improve the World Series of Good. Would love to hear them!
