Igor Kurganov to manage Elon Musk's $5.7 billion charity donations

The nosebleed poker player was revealed as one of the key figures managing one of the biggest charity donations of all time.

This week it was revealed that Elon Musk gifted $5.7 billion of Tesla Inc. stock to charity last November. 

While it is not known exactly where the donations have gone, you can get an idea of the sorts of foundations that will benefit when you learn who has been helping him decide where they go - high stakes poker player Igor Kurganov. 

You may recall that Kurganov is a co-founder of Raise for Effective Giving (REG), an effective altruism venture he created with Liv Boeree and Philipp Gruissem. Effective altruism is all about choosing charities where the biggest net gain can be achieved for every penny spent. 

Kurganov has been somewhat absent from the poker scene in the last couple of years and now we know why. Musk has appointed him to keep in contact with grantees and assess their proposals. 

The ideal candidate for this job?

The philosophy of REG was to get poker players to donate 2% of their profits to charity. Martin Jacobson was famously one of the players who did this when he won the WSOP Main Event for $10 million.

REG has helped many charities including The Against Malaria Foundation, The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), The Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), GiveDirectly, GiveWell, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, The Humane League, Mercy For Animals, The Great Ape Project and The Nonhuman Rights Project.

In this respect, Kurganov seems like the ideal person to manage such large charitable donations. Back in 2017 we spoke to him about his charitable work. 

Are poker players a good choice to work with charity? Let us know in the comments: