Lee Davy sits down to talk to Igor Kurganov about his role with the REG Charity and to ascertain his opinion on Daniel Colman’s actions after the BIG ONE for ONE DROP.
Sometimes when I look at Igor Kurganov I think he would make an absolute diamond James Bond bad guy. Then you sit down and talk to him and you realize he hasn’t got a cat in hells chance of landing the role because he’s just too nice.
He has this confidence about him, and although the $7.6 million he has won in live tournaments has helped fuel that, it’s comes from a different place. A deep, dark place where emotions hang out.
Kurganov is a young man who has figured a lot of things out at an early age. Important things. Things that are beyond some people. Things like how he can make a difference in the world. That’s where the confidence comes from. It’s from a solid foundation of beliefs and values. A foundation that it seems Dan Colman is just starting to build.
Kurganov has partnered up with several high profile poker players, and the Effective Altruism movement in Switzerland, to create the REG (Raising for Effective Giving) charity for poker players. Together they are going to create a movement. Together they are going to help build strong human foundations. Together they are going to do what they can to help change the world.
I believe that REG organized a dinner for some special guests, the other night, tell me about that.
“We had an official launch dinner to bring a couple of people together. It was mainly about REG, but in general as well to think about what we – the people who are now more in the spotlight – can do best to in some way represent poker and to also find out how we can help the world in other ways.”
And what was the response like?
“The response from the people was great. We had a talk from Adriano Mannino, who is one of the effective altruists working in Switzerland. Afterwards, many people were determined to help us out. I think you will see more people wearing patches soon, and hopefully the word is going to be spreading. One of the important things is to spread the word and build a movement of people who want to spread the message even further.”
I believe you ran a promotion to offer some lucky REG members some poker training, tell me about that.
“Yeah, we had a promotion where we wanted to help some of the members who were getting involved in the Main Event. Phil {Gruissem} and I met up with three people who we pulled out randomly. We sat down with them for two and a half hours and talked about tournament poker and live reads. I even ended up buying pieces of them.”
When your idea first started to germinate was it just about raising some money, or have you always had a much bigger picture?
“In the beginning it was about money, but you can do so much more with the money. The question is: where does the money go? And that question needs answering. There are sites like Givewell.org who are working on it all the time. They have 10 economists doing the math on it to find out where the money can go in order to be more cost effective.
“So getting the money to the most effective causes is the first step. But with money you can help out these meta-charities, which are around as well. You can help build an awareness of charitable giving that is rational, and would lead to them promoting the idea to other people who can give money as well. So you can pay with money for the promotion of an idea that then leads to more people giving money, that then that leads to the direct help that is going to be in the places where it’s needed.”
Now you have launched are you acutely aware of the need to use your position in poker to become even more widely known, and recognized, than you currently are?
“Yeah…actually as soon as I started getting deeper into Effective Altruism I figured whilst being in the spotlight, here and there, it was a great opportunity to get across your ideas. Before that I didn’t have friends on Facebook that I didn’t know, and didn’t have a Twitter account, but now I can see the value in that.
The value of your platform leads me onto the Dan Colman debate. You have written some great responses to his inaction on the REG site, tell me a little bit about those thoughts.
“We are not just a charity, we are also about spreading the ideas that we believe in. Dan Colman had an idea that he believed in and he chose the path of not doing interviews straight away because he didn’t want to promote poker. But actually now he wrote the blog post he spread the word in a more reasonable way, how I think one probably should, and in a way that one should behave in this situation.
“If he believes in his idea, then this is the best opportunity for him to start promoting it. One could say that maybe long term if everybody acts like this then poker gets a worse rep, and if that’s what he wants then that’s achievable. That’s a very long-term thing.
“What he can do best, if he wants to protect the people, is to get his voice out there to explain the dangers of poker, and build the correct mindset around it, and if he is a good role model in that situation he can help out a lot of people.
“Colman leaving poker achieves nothing because there is always someone to replace him. If someone else would have won the event, the system would have kept on rolling. The best way to take action against the system, if you think it’s necessary against an unhelpful system, is to actually get into the system, work with the system, find out more about it, and then try to fix it from within. Colman is in that system and he can make a huge difference with the money he won, whereas someone else in that position may not have done so.”
You wrote a great piece explaining that even though Colman may be causing harm to certain individuals within poker, that harm is worth it when you consider the greater good he can do by remaining in his position, and using his money to help people who really need it, can you expand on that please.
“You have to compare the suffering of both scenarios against each other. So on one hand Dan Colman can win $1k from someone whilst playing Heads-Up SNG online. That person lives in the Western world and can probably afford that loss somehow. Now there are things you can do with even 10% of the $1k for so much greater good.
“In some places you can pay for a year of education for just $2.50. Where we donated money to in Uganda you need just 50 cents for a treatment that will give a child medicine for de-worming. That child is not only free from the disease but can get an education also.
“So you could win $1K off someone, and only 10 percent of that could help 200 children for one year, and so even if we are sometimes doing something negative by taking money from people who might need it, we can outweigh that, by orders of magnitude, by giving it to places that need it way, way more.”
So what you are saying is Dan Colman can do more good for the human race by staying where he is and winning more money, as long as he does the right things with that money.
“Absolutely, right now he has developed the highest percentage of skill that can be reached in poker. For him to go into something else, where his skill set is not as optimized as it is in poker, will mean he probably won’t be able to impact the world like he can if he remains in poker by using the money he wins, or using opportunities like these: where I am being interviewed, or whilst being in the spotlight in the ONE-DROP.
“I think he realizes that now. It was just a very momentary decision for him. He only had the choice from his position between doing the wrong things. Either he spoke about something he doesn’t believe in, or he didn’t talk at all—so he was in a very tough spot.”
Where can people sign up to join the REG Charity?
“It’s REG-Charity.org. There are a bunch of good articles about rationality on the site, and they relate well to poker, and will help people out with their games.”
