Elon Musk Hires Igor Kurganov to Manage Donations

Last updated on February 16th, 2022

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High-stakes poker player Igor Kurganov hasn’t been in the news much lately. He plays his poker when time permits and has appeared to keep himself busy outside of the poker world as well. Kurganov turned up in the news once again today, this time the mainstream media. Bloomberg wrote an article about Elon Musk and his philanthropy…and how Kurganov is managing those donations.

Who saw that coming?

That’s not to say that he’s not a great person for the job; he is. In fact, Kurganov co-founded REG (Raising for Effective Giving). His own passion for effective altruism clearly led him to the new position with Musk.

His Rise to High Stakes

Igor Kurganov started his life in Russia but spent many of his formative years in Germany. He was a competitive young person and tended to enjoy competitions that involved math and analytics rather than physical sports. Since math was his forte, he grew up wanting to develop some type of career around math.

During his time at university, Kurganov found online poker to be a challenging game but one that came naturally. He was able to earn some money to live on during school, but over time, he transitioned to spending more time studying the game, making an earnest effort to improve his play. He loved the game and created a career of it.

Online poker was the basis for Kurganov’s career, but he did venture into live poker when opportunities presented themselves. His first results in live tournaments showed in 2009, He played a range of buy-in levels and quickly started making final tables on the European Poker Tour. Final tables in 2010 and 2011 delivered six-figure payouts in high roller events, and he won his first one at the 2012 EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final…for €1.08M.

Kurganov tended toward high-stakes tournaments. He won tournaments from Las Vegas to Melbourne, and he won everything from small events on the Grand Prix Poker Tour and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure to Aria Super High Rollers. He won a World Series of Poker bracelet in 2017 when he and partner (and fellow poker pro) Liv Boeree took down the WSOP Tag Team event.

To date, Kurganov’s live tournament winnings exceed $18.7M. He tops the Russia all-tie money list.

His Desire to Give Effectively

Boeree and Kurganov shared a love for philanthropy, both drawn to a particular type of giving. Effective altruism is a philosophy of giving that uses evidence and reason to find the most effective ways of giving. They find it most important to give to organizations that use donations most wisely and that do the most amount of good work for the dollar.

The two partnered with fellow high-stakes poker pro Philipp Gruissem in 2004 to create an organization that could funnel percentages of poker players’ winnings to altruistic causes. They worked with the Foundation for Effective Altruism to found REG, Raising for Effective Giving. The vision of REG is:

“A world where all people use evidence and rationality to have the biggest impact with their philanthropy.”

The group’s mission statement recommends charities that meet the criteria and do the most to reduce suffering in the world. And through the end of 2019, REG had moved more than $14.8M to multiple charities while only using $506K for expenses from 2014-2019.

His Connection to Elon Musk

Elon Musk is rich. Bloomberg and Forbes assert that he is the richest man in the world. By the start of 2021, they said that his net worth was more than $175B (that’s B for billion!). Among his companies, the best known are SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk does donate charitably through his own Musk Foundation. Local school systems near his SpaceX port in Texas, climate change organizations, and Covid-19 researchers are among the many that have benefited. Then, several months ago, he donated $5.7B (again, B for billion!) worth of Tesla stock to charity. And according to Bloomberg, “professional poker player-turned-philanthropist” Igor Kurganov is working with grantees and their grant proposals.

Little is known about Kurganov’s role or the intention of the donated billions. Both Bloomberg and Forbes speculated that one of the reasons for the large gift is to reduce Musk’s tax obligation.

NEW: Months before Musk donated $5.7 billion of his Tesla stake to charity in November, he'd added a new face to his foundation's staff.
Igor Kurganov, a former poker player-turned effective altruist seems to be running things at the Austin-based orghttps://t.co/tb2ZLYBDlI
— Sophie Alexander (@sooo__phie) February 15, 2022