Grinding for Good

Final items for the year

So this post is delayed as a result of some major moving around, but this completes all the donations for the year. This was lots of fun and I hope I was able to make my FPPs useful!

So here’s a list of the final ones:

Kiva #7: $225 + 27

To Jiriman in Uganda to help purchase rice for his produce business. I’m obviously a very strong supporter of rice, as it was about all I ate for 4 years of college, so this was a very easy loan to support.

Kiva #6: $200 + 30

To Ahmad in Jordan to help cover costs of an engineering tuition in Jordan. This was my first educational loan and I really love this idea for 3 main reasons:
1) It’s universally going to be very useful
2) Loans could be paid directly to the university, ensuring that they aren’t misused
3) The price point for universities in many countries fits perfectly into the microfinance structure (which obviously wouldn’t work for insane $40k/year tuitions in the US) 

JUF: $180
Support Jewish programs in the Chicago area and Israel! 

Anza: $100
A fellow poker player set up this nonprofit to solve an important problem in Africa: saving time with a simple cart. The Tanzanian area they focus on has a huge issue with children and women commuting for hours a day carrying things on their heads. A simple cart cart could be a huge boost to their productivity. Anza is running a 1,000 $100 donation campaign to kickstart their program. 

Northwestern: $100 
As if they didn’t earn enough off of me in parking ticket fees while I was there. 

SMS Prototype: $3500
This is a really awesome project I’m interested in launching or assisting someone else to launch. It relates to running an SMS solution service that targets the poor and is VERY easy to use for both parties. I think this could make a real difference and am excited to do some testing soon. 

KIVA LOAN/DONATION #5: UGANDA PHARMACY

Gave my fifth Kiva loan for $200 and accompanying donation of $30. This is for a group to help them purchase more drugs to sell in their pharmacies. I liked this one because it illustrates the most common reason these loans are useful — a business is doing well and profiting when inventories are in stock, but needs a constant stream of that stock in order to actually make it. 

 See the lending profile here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/314324

One of the main reasons I appreciate that is because in junior high I had a similar situation. I recognized a couple great opportunities on eBay — selling (cheap) wallets and watches. I found a couple wholesalers (I actually remember their names, Dallas Wholesaler for the watches and Marshal Wallet for the wallets) and knew I could resell the items on eBay for at least about $3-5 in profit each when they only cost about $2 for the wallets and $5 for the watches. The problem was in order to get those wholesale prices you need to buy in bulk (at least 100 pieces and the more the cheaper). 

I was lucky — I could (with parental permission of course) raid my savings account — which was enough to get the initial stock and show a healthy profit. By getting these Kiva loans, the people can have the same types of opportunities I did.

Unfortunately my VPP goals for the year have been reduced due to relocating in November and having less time to commit to poker than I had anticipated (OK, that last part has happened every year).

Annex Shul Donation #1 (#7 Overall)

Sorry! It’s been a while since blogging. Have a lot of posts to make up so will try to do at least 3-4 entries over the next week.

Annex Shul is a synagogue in Toronto that I’ve gone to a couple times. As an outsider in a new city for the first time I was naturally drawn to meeting similar-ish people (and finding good places to eat chicken). The ratio of people I’ve enjoyed meeting there is probably higher than in any other thing I’ve done in Canada. 

Despite having a mediocre chicken experience and being stuck talking to a weird older man for part of the time during my first visit, my next one was amazing. Hard to go wrong with home cooked essentially all you can eat chicken and outdoors eating.

Enough with the chicken. The services there have a lot of energy and are in a smaller sized room, so feel pretty tightly-knit. Very easy to follow along with and very relaxed, with explanations and stories thrown in at useful times, which is great for understanding.

I met with the spiritual leader Yacov a couple times. He’s given me really strong and direct guidance on Jewish learning and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him over a couple coffee shop sit downs (maybe I shouldn’t have ignored those 100 get coffee with someone from Hillel emails in college).

I’ve been interested in learning for 3-4 years but have been pretty haphazard about it and have almost entirely focused on things that match my interests (ie food, Jewish laws, current events) and have skipped much of the core. 

So the plan made is:

1) Read Jewish Literacy book —> ordered it to Chicago in July, picked it up 3 weeks ago when I went home, haven’t started yet —> at this pace, I’ll be done by about 2014 (going to start it next week, really)

2) Read Torah portions —> read all the summaries online, going to follow along weekly once the reading starts over next month

3) Tefillin/parts of morning service —> not being very good about this, need to do better job

So I’m giving $200 to the Annex Shul because it’s been one of my favorite Toronto experiences (which doesn’t say much — but I have really liked it there!). Looking forward to going back soon.

DonorsChoose Donation #2 (#6 overall): Chicago Math Class Materials

Doing another DonorsChoose donation, yet again to a Chicago South side school, Eberhart Elementary School, for math materials for $130. The project is called Let the Games Begin!. It’s for interactive math games for small group learning.

These interactive math games/activities will reinforce instruction in the following areas (problem solving, money(ways to show the same amount), elapsed time, real world mental math). These are difficult concepts/skills for 2nd grade students to grasp. 

I again gave to this type of project cause I can visualize pretty well how useful this kind of thing could be. Last summer I spent a couple weeks teaching in Cape Town, including math, and (aside from teachers being very bad/consistently walking outside of classrooms to text message) high quality interactive games like these would’ve been very, very useful for the class. 

Had a great dinner tonight with 8 other Toronto poker refugees at Origin Restaurant. Since we had over 6 people we were forced to get a tasting menu where they just kept bringing plates of food to the table. Was good for trying things but meant many items were shaky. The hen with orzo and tuna salads were probably my favorites. 

Kiva loan/donation #4: Uganda General Store

Gave my third Kiva loan for $200 and accompanying donation of $30. This went to a Ugandan man Moses. He needs to purchase important items for his general store. Though soap has never been very important to me (joke), I’ve lately taken a great liking to cooking oil, specifically extra virgin olive oil. I eat 8 teaspoons per day in my salads (16 total) and use 1 teaspoon in the morning to cook eggs. That’s 79.33 g/fat/day! Hopefully more Ugandans can now experience this type of fat content as well. See the lending profile here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/314324

Moses is a Ugandan man, age 27, who needs a loan to purchase sugar, soap, cooking oil and maize flour to sell in a retail shop that he has operated for eight years. He is the father of three children, whose mother is a shopkeeper. He lives in a two-room rented house with five people that he takes care of, and he dreams of acquiring land on which to build a permanent house and educating his children. He acquired his initial capital from a driving job that he still maintains. He dreams of growing his shop into a wholesale business.

Excited that PokerStars is taking Toronto-based Supernova Elites to Harbour Sixty this week. They’re graciously comping us on the meal so looking forward to chowing down. 

DonorsChoose Donation #1: Chicago Math Class Materials

Trying out this new site DonorsChoose. Teachers post specific classroom materials that they need (these regularly come out of the teacher’s pocket) and the public can fund them for the classroom’s benefit. 

I donated $273 for a project called “Make our Math Class Magical!”. I wanted to do a Chicago school and a math project for the first one since that’s where I’m from and math obviously the most awesome subject. The school is a high poverty school called Sawyer Elementary School on the South side.  

In 2nd/3rd grade one of my favorite things to do was play Around the World, where the teacher would go from desk to desk showing two students a math quiz card and whoever got the answer first got to advance. The goal was to advance around the “world”/classroom. 

The teacher emphasizes that students would lose interest in math because of her lack of materials and also that this should help to challenge the advanced students, while reviewing with the ones that need more help. 

More details on the are here: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=571838. 

The bill that’s been introduced in Congress looks like it’d pass at the earliest in about 1 year, so I’m not expecting there to be a great shot of legalization any time before the beginning of 2013. 

Will finally be going to Las Vegas for the first legitimate time (ie go on the strip for more than a few hours) at the end of the month for a bachelor party. Will be staying 4 days/3 nights at the Venetian. Unfortunately the WSOP will be over and all my poker friends will be gone, but I kind of prefer keeping poker away from these sorts of trips since I see enough poker all day during the week online. 

Plans for the BP are pretty unknown other than expecting to eat very well since the BP man is a restaurant/food pro. 

Kiva loan/donation #3: Uganda General Store

Gave my third Kiva loan for $100 and accompanying donation of $15. This went to a Ugandan man Harunga, who has three children, in honor of father’s day. Uganda seems pretty awesome and I’d really like to get over there in the next year or so to see the gorillas as well as the 1,000 strong Jewish Community. See the lending profile here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/305402

Haruna is 30 years old, married and has three children, all of whom are currently in school. He has a small retail shop, which he has run for five years. 

To help expand his business, Haruna has requested a loan of 1,500,000 Ugandan Shillings from Kiva partner, BRAC Uganda. The loan will be used to purchase more essential commodities, such as soap, for resale. With the help of his loan from BRAC, Haruna hopes to generate greater profits and pay school fees for his children. In the future, he hopes to expand his business further.

Due to a reduced VPP rate and finally realizing that setting practical goals is better than impossible/life ruining ones, I’m most likely going to be going for 2m VPPs this year. To do so I’d only have to play about 40 hrs/week for the rest of the year and can take about 4 weeks off. This would result in a total of $8,000 being loaned/donated through this site! 

2.25m VPPs is within reach but would take about 48 hrs/week and would only allow for about 3 weeks off, which wouldn’t allow me to relocate if needed. Also 48 hours is substantially more difficult than 40. 2.25m would be nice, but I’ll be pleased with 2m. 

A new poker news site run by NoahSD from 2+2 called Subject: Poker recently came out. It is super in depth and trustworthy reporting about recent poker events, with a particular focus on the aftermath of Black Friday. Though they don’t have a ton of articles, this is more than made up for in the quality of the ones they have, easily the richest poker news on the internet right now. 

It looks like a new bill for legalization will be released next week. Seems like major steps in the right direction, but no one can be too optimistic about what’s going to happen. We do know that games will most likely be Americans only to start and estimates of a “new boom” going on for at least about 3 years, where the games are much easier than now, seems probable. Estimates for the legalization have varied between about 1 year and 10 years. Most seem to think that the new developments make the shorter end of that range the most likely.

Kiva loan/donation #2: Cambodia fish

Gave my second Kiva loan for $200 and accompanying donation of $30. This went to a Cambodian woman who sells fish, in honor of my recent research about a SE Asia trip and my love of fish. She sells fresh fish that her husband catches and sells them in the community. She needs to buy a new motorcycle to improve her sales of various merchandise. See the lending profile here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/302519?_te=ty

Mrs. Pea, 46, is married to Nem Loy, 56, who catches fresh fish in and around the lakes of his community. Mrs. Pea sells the fresh fish that her husband and other fishermen catch for reasonable prices. Presently, she also sells some merchandise around her village for extra income. Because of her old broken motorbike, her fish selling business has been affected. In order to solve this problem, Mrs. Pea is seeking a loan from Kiva to buy a new motorcycle to replace the broken one.

First Kiva loan and donation!

To kick off the site I gave my first Kiva loan for $200 and accompanying donation of $30. They went to a woman in Kenya to help purchase cutlery and plates for resale. See the lending profile here: http://www.kiva.org/lend/299566?_te=ty

Halima is a married woman with four children, three of whom attend school. She owns a house that has neither electricity nor running water. Her greatest monthly expenses are food and school fees.

For the past two years, she has operated a business selling home products such as cutlery and plates. Her potential customers are neighbours and passersby. Halima faces a major challenge of seasonality in her business. She dreams of expanding it in the future. 

With the Kshs 40,000 she wants to purchase additional cutlery and plates for resale. She decided to join Yehu because of the efficiency of the loan products.

I chose Halima because even though I don’t always use cutlery, I know they are important for many people. This is a type of business I hadn’t seen before on Kiva and I wish Halima best of luck with her plans!

I had plans to get involved with some Chicago organizations, but with poker not being allowed in the US, I will have to look for opportunities elsewhere. 

I’m glad to be back playing comfortably now from Toronto and expect to hit 600k VPPs later today. 

What should US poker players be doing now?

Since the events of “Black Friday,” thousands of US based online poker players have been put out of a job as the big 3 US facing sites have closed down to Americans. There’s a lot of confusion about what to do next for these players. Here are my top suggestions:

Return to school
If you haven’t finished school yet this is the absolute best opportunity to do it. Think about what you want to study and what locations you’d be happy with and get to researching 5-10 schools to apply to. 

I think a degree has a lot of value for almost everyone, but if you really have no interest in learning and know you aren’t going to care and aren’t going to do well, then it’s probably not worth your while to go (and I’ve never been able to convince someone with this mindset).

Get a job
Put together a solid resume, making sure to talk about poker quantitatively and specifically for maximum impact.

Talk to your college career counselors and use their career website job listings for starting points. Talk to Sixth Street Careers if you’re interested in a finance job, they specialize in the poker to finance transition.

If you haven’t finished college yet, consider doing that first.

Look into doing a summer internship as a way to boost your resume before looking for a full time thing. 

Think about trading, but also think about other finance, entrepreneurship, non-profits, etc. Trading is a lot like poker, which is nice, but maybe you’ve had enough.

Play live
I generally like this option in conjunction with looking for a real job or returning to school. Most of my friends who have tried it really dread it already, but if you’re doing a traveling tournament schedule, I could see that being fun for a while.

Travel the world
You’ve made a nice amount from poker, the games are the hardest they’ve ever been, you’re young. This might be the time to go on an extended backpacking trip around the world. Consider the traditional routes of South America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Think about stops in Southern Africa, the middle east/Israel, India, and China/Japan/South Korea. 

On a per day basis, these trips can cost around the same as living in a first world city. Seeing the world in your 20s would be an unbelievable experience. Check outTravel Independent for great reviews/ratings of a ton of global cities.

Move abroad
This is the option I’m taking. I’m fortunate to have a 2nd citizenship in the UK as well as family there, so can easily relocate to London at any time. As much as I’ll miss Trader Joe’s carrots and Cubs games, I think this will be a good opportunity to continue playing and experience a new culture.

Not really feeling that head tilt, hopefully it’s just because I needed to let the sign be visible

For most people considering this I think the most important factors are location and visa. Normally when I look into a new city I try to evaluate based on the quantity and locations of CrossFit gyms and kosher bakeries. Those criteria are now slightly less important.

Location: You have to go somewhere where you’ll be happy and appreciate the culture. This is a great opportunity to see the world. Think about:

• Distance from home
• Languages you want to learn (or if you want to be around all English speakers)
• Where friends will be
• Interaction with locals
• City cultural offerings (sports, bars, museums, etc.)
• Decent infrastructure/internet connection

Take a look at Wikipedia’s best global cities list. To me, there’s a lot of value and excitement in being in a city with a global reach. 

Visas: Now the downer, many of those best cities won’t let you in for more than 3-6 months at a time. Also even if a country can give up to 6 months at a time (like Canada), they’re free to give however many or few days as they want. I flew in to Canada at the end of 2010 and they only gave me a month in the country.

The visas seem to be at the discretion of the border agents, rarely with any hard rules in place. In some poorer countries like Thailand I’ve read that you can pretty much infinitely exit for a few hours and come back to reset your visa, while for places like Canada that might only work once or never.

Here are your best options:

• Pre-existing citizenship/residency in another country
• Moving to a country that has no problems if you do “border runs” (I believe Argentina and Thailand are good options here)
• Doing 3-6 month stints at a time then moving to the next one (never feel settled, hard to get into a rhythm, but will see a lot)
• If you’re 18-30 you can probably live in Australia for up to 1 year through their Work and Holiday visa

Bank accounts: Should be in a country where it’s not difficult to open a bank account. It may be possible to open an HSBC account in the US and have them open you a foreign account for a fee. 

Note: I’m not qualified to give advice on any of the above. I suggest speaking with accountants and immigration lawyers before attempting any move.

City Suggestion List
Check out Syous’s blog High Stakes Living  for his thoughts — he’s traveled extensively around Asia and seems to really value seeing the world as well. The below suggestions are based on my views of the cities. I haven’t researched the visa/tax/legality situations of them.

Canada: Toronto (but as Syous says, this is an opportunity to experience new cultures, not see another very American city)
South America: Buenos Aires (best option in the Americas)
Middle East: Tel Aviv (amazing weather/beaches, close to Jerusalem)
Europe: London (best global city)
Asia: Bangkok (large poker community, good cost of living)
Australia: Sydney (beautiful city, great weather, high standard of living)

Computer Logistics
I highly recommend getting a 17” MacBook Pro. The battery life is fantastic and this will be your main computer for your entire time abroad. It also supports a 30” monitor. Get a hardsided suitcase and pack your monitor with its original packaging and a bunch of clothes (if you play a lot of tables and need it).

Now with a backpack and 2 suitcases (maybe 1 suitcase even) you’ve got all the clothes and computer stuff you need!

My Plan

I no longer own that setup, but if I did I probably wouldn’t be traveling with it

So what am I going to do? Though I don’t want to play poker forever, I do want to spend the next ~5 years playing/running an online business for about 9-10 months/year and traveling for the other 2-3. I think seeing the world before age 30 is an unbelievable opportunity that we’re lucky to have. I’ll probably set up my base in London for most of this time, though may do a year or two elsewhere to start. 

Of course if poker gets legalized, I’ll be back in America instantly, but estimates for this happening seem to be anywhere from 2-10 years away.