Doing Something

I’ve now been a professional poker player for almost 15 years. That looks crazy to me on the page, but it’s true. I’ve been doing this for nearly half my life. Before I was a poker player, I had never held a job for longer than a few months. I’ve met some amazing people in my time as a professional and I’ve had some great times with the people I’ve become close to in poker and many of them have expressed a similar sentiment to one I have dealt with on and off over my career.

It’s hard to rationalize a life as a poker player. There’s an existential angst that comes with playing poker. What is our purpose exactly? We don’t contribute to society, we don’t provide a service for the most part, we mostly are just money-making machines, some more efficient than others. I’ve reconciled this a little more recently because I’m contributing to society by growing it. I now have three kids and my wife and I raise them the best we can with a goal of making them into good citizens of the world. Others have dealt with the existential dread by quitting poker altogether or at least taking some time away from poker to do something else with their lives. The group of people I want to highlight in this column are those who are using their money and their influence to raise money for charity.

Billy Vogel is not very well known to the public that watches poker. He plays most of his volume online, but he’s done well in a live tournament here and there. Eight years ago, he helped gather donations for a holiday toy drive and he’s since taken the lead on keeping it going after it grew too big for the website where it started. He raises money every year, then uses that money to go out and buy toys for underprivileged kids. He does much of this work himself and this year, he joined with the Atlantic City Police Department to do a carnival and toy give away. He does a great job of negotiating better deals for the toys because of the volume he is buying. He raised $8,000 this year, a record amount for his charity.

Better known in the community is Dan Smith. A regular in the highest stakes tournaments in the world, Dan has just under $20 million in tournament earnings on his resume and plays in ultra high-stakes cash games on a regular basis. Along with Martin and Tom Crowley, successful DFS (Daily Fantasy Sports) players, Dan has pledged to match $2 million in donations to the charities they have put forward. Any donation made through their website or with a receipt emailed to them will be matched. They announced it on Dec. 9 and filled the total pledges by Dec. 28. As of this writing, Fedor Holz has jumped in on the charity effort and pledged to match another $250,000 for the charities on their site. Poker players and people in the poker industry have come out in droves to donate, and one in particular did some major organizing to get some effective giving done. Alee Yah invited poker superstars from around the world to stream for charity and they raised $25,000 that was matched by Dan Smith. Her effort was capped by a 24-hour stream that raised almost $8,000 to get to that nice round $25,000 number.

Dan Smith summed it up nicely in a quote from their donation website
“Aside from whether you believe humans are morally obligated to help others, even if you are concerned about your own self interests, there are strong reasons to donate. Studies show that donating to charity can increase happiness.”

Donating and doing good things for others is great for your mental health and for your feeling of usefulness in the world. If you’re one of the many poker players that feels like you’re not really contributing anything to the world, remember that you can donate your money and/or time throughout the year, not just at holiday times. People are in need year round and in today’s climate where we are becoming increasingly physically isolated, it is almost always a good thing to give of ourselves to others. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG