Chris Moneymaker

talk about Chris Moneymaker, a poker player at the centre of one of the biggest poker fairy tales or all time.  Moneymaker’s story is an inspiring one for those who believe that  piercing the top echelons of whatever they participate in is impossible.  He managed to achieve something that was thought to be if not impossible, then at least extremely difficult.

We’ll step back a few years to 2003; two things were happening in the world of poker at around that time – interest in the live game was declining and the entry numbers for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas were also decreasing.  On the other hand the interest in online poker and Online Keno was on the increase, as it had been since the mid-1990s when it became possible to set up reliable Online Casinos.  Up until this point, the worlds of live and online poker were largely separate and seemed unlikely to crossover.

The satellite system is partly responsible for the crossover which happened, especially with regard to Chris Moneymaker.  Satellite tournaments occur online and at live tournaments and are a way for those amateur players to enter a tournament for a small fee.  If they win they qualify for a slightly bigger tournament, gradually working their way up until the final qualifier enables the winner to participate in the WSOP Main Event, for which the usual buy-in would be around $10,000.

Moneymaker spent $39 in 2003 entering a satellite tournament, ultimately resulting in his appearance at the Main Event.  For most amateurs, just reaching that pint would be an achievement but Moneymaker of course went on to win the whole event, finally beating poker pro Sam Farha when the competition was down to the last two.  The prize money was $2.5 million.

It’s easy to call Moneymaker’s victory a one-off in the annals of WSOP history but what he did was unwittingly rejuvenate the competition.  Massive media interest followed and the most important thing to emerge from the event was the realisation that an amateur could win the biggest poker prize of all and walk away with a Europa Casino Bonus Code. Check out the final hand here:

Guy Laliberté is not only a circus entrepreneur though; he’s also a billionaire philanthropist most associated with the One Drop Foundation.  So what’s the One Drop Foundation then?  As the name may suggest it’s a long term scheme to provide access to drinking water to all those ares where that is currently difficult.  Laliberté himself has pledged $100 million for the first 25 years operating costs.

The current news about One Drop is that a a charity poker tournament will be held this year (2012) to raise even more money for the project.  Why poker?  Well Laliberté is an enthusiastic poker player; he may also like Blackjack Strategie, Online Slots or a spin of the roulette wheel, we’re not sure; but poker is certainly his game so it made sense for him to try and persuade all his poker pro friends and colleagues to enter this fund-raising event, called The Big One For One Drop.

Guy Laliberte (left) with poker pro Jonathan Duhamel

It will take place as part of the World Series of Poker later this year at the Rio All-Suite Casino and Hotel and it will provide the biggest poker prize in history.  If you fancy entering the tournament there’s still time but you should be aware of a few numbers and facts first.  You will need $1 million for the buy-in so this really is only a game for the most successful poker pros and wealthy poker enthusiasts.  $12.3 million will go to the winner and when the dust has settled, somewhere between $3.3 million and $5.28 million will go to the One Drop Foundation.

Having said that this event is really only for the rich, it will be possible for those poker players of more modest means to enter satellite tournaments for a starting sum of $65. Check out onlinecasinospielen.at for more information.

We’ve wanted to include Mr. Brunson in this post because of what you might describe as his services to the game of poker.  Of the old guard, Doyle Brunson is probably the most famous poker professional still playing today.

Doyle Brunson was born in 1933 in the southern U.S, state of Texas.  Conveniently Texas is the home of the most popular poker variant in the world today – Texas Hold’em. By the time Brunson was born, Hold’em had already been played in that state for more than 30 years.  In his formative years Brunson showed no particular aptitude towards poker – in fact he was a talented athlete, particularly favouring basketball.  A injury sustained in a non-sporting accident put an end to any serious sporting hopes but by this time Brunson had begun to play poker, particularly Five Card Draw and Seven Card Stud.

Doyle Brunson

By the time Brunson graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in his home state, he was an accomplished poker player who had realised that a professional career in that field was awaiting him.  He spent the first few years of this new career traveling around the southern states with contemporaries such as Amarillo Slim, playing in a variety of legal and not-so-legal games,  Those illegal games were often run by organised crime – it was no Paysafecard Casino and on more than one occasion Brunson was robbed of his winnings following a successful poker session. That sort of thing doesn’t happen at a Europa Casino.

Doyle Brunson eventually wound up in the home of legalised gambling in the United States, Las Vegas.  It was here in 1969/70 that he and a handful of others were invited to participate i what would later become the world championship of poker – the WSOP (World Series of Poker).  The majority of those players were southerners and the game of choice was Texas Hold’em.  Over the years, Brunson has become one of the most successful competitors at the WSOP, winning more than his fair share of the coveted bracelets which are awarded to the winners of each event. The bracelets are a Casino Bonus well worth winning.

Doyle Brunson has authored several influential poker books including the now famous Super/System which has influenced the playing styles of many other pros.  Perhaps the biggest achievement is that he is still playing tournament poker today, in the era of the Internet Casino, more than fifty years after first picking up a pack of cards.

Bono

The name of Paul Hewson probably doesn’t mean much to most people.  The name Bono definitely does of course – the globally famous lead singer of U2, the Irish rock band who have recorded and sold some of the world’s most memorable tunes of the past thirty years or so.

Before we get to Bono’s charitable and political activist work we should have a brief look at the man’s career as a musician because it is precisely that career which has enabled him to maintain the influence which he undoubtedly has.  While at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin in 1976, Bono responded to an advertisement for band members posted by Larry Mullen Jr. and the story appears to write itself from that point on.

The band members have remained the same from the beginning (Mullen Jr, Bono, David Evans (The Edge), Adam Clayton) aside from The Edges brother Richard who left the band in the early days.  The name ‘U2′ was settled on after experiments with ‘Feedback’ and ‘The Hype’.  From the very beginning, Bono has been the main songwriter and singer; he also played the guitar in the early days but his lack of talent meant he didn’t do that for long.

U2 played around the Dublin area in the early years and managed to land a television slot in 1978.  Local success led to a London visit for Bono to plug the band in 1979 and later that year they played a small tour of London clubs.  1980 was a big year for the band with single and album releases as well as a national tour of the U.K. and a 14 date your of the U.S.

The subsequent two years set the scene for U2′s future success as their next two albums (October and War) were critically and commercially successful and there’s no need to relive here the enormous fame that the band has garnered since those early days.  What U2 has given Bono is a platform on which to expound his social and political views and promote his charities.  This of course has led to the usual accusations about pop stars getting involved with politics and there are some good arguments on both sides.  What can’t be denied is that however Bono has got his message across, a huge amount of good work has been achieved because of his involvement.

Part Two follows…

This is where Bruno Serato comes in; an Italian immigrant who has made a success out of the Anaheim White House restaurant in the area.  Arriving from his homeland more than thirty years ago, Serata worked his way up from the bottom to become the owner of the popular eaterie.

Bruno Serato

His charity work dates back some time; he set up Caterina’s Club (named after his mother) in 2003 to raise money for local children and it was when his mother visited him a couple of years later that he realised more needed to be done.  At the facility funded by Caterina’s Club they witnessed a boy eating a bag of crisps (chips) for his dinner and it was Caterina herself who prompted her son to think of ways to make sure the children received a proper evening meal.

The discovery of this child led the Serato’s on to find out about the large number of children living in motel accommodation and again it was Caterina who came up with the idea that Bruno should begin to serve free meals every night at his restaurant.  To begin with he was unsure about the cost and practicalities of feeding pasta to seventy kids every evening but Caterina insisted and now, seven years later, Bruno has dished up more than 270,000 meals.

It’s not always been easy; the recent economic downturn meant that on some evenings Bruno was giving away more meals than he was selling but things soon began to improve again.  In fact the publicity Bruno received from the media coverage of his charity work almost certainly helped his restaurant back to profitability.

Zen Buddhism Master Hsu Yun

To flesh out the background a little, Zen (also known as Chan) Buddhism began to wane in popularity from the middle of the 17th century as the more traditional Pure Land Buddhism gained in favour.  Hsu Yun was an advocate and teacher of both branches but is credited with reviving Zen Buddhism almost single-handedly.

He chose to follow the Buddhist path in his early teens and seems to have dedicated himself to this choosing completely from that point on.  His father had pressed him to study Taoism as well but Yun soon found this inadequate.  Still trying to persuade him against a monastic life, his parents arranged a marriage but it was never consummated.  By the age of 19 he was living, shaven-headed, at a monastery – at the same time hiding from his family.

In the next two decades, Hsu Yun continued to study and live as a hermit, striving to reach the higher states of enlightenment.  During this period he also made a seven-year pilgrimage to the sacred bodhimandala of Avalokitesvara, as well as other important sites.  He knew he was still learning and in his middle age spent years wandering through Asia and South-East Asia.  It was not until he was 56 that he believed that he had achieved the highest state that he could hope to attain.

It was in his old age that he came to be regarded as the legendary teacher that history has shown him to be; his constant traveling and teaching spread the Zen Buddhism word once more and most contemporary Zen masters trace their lineage back to this one man.

Mohamed Bouazizi commemorative stamp

Middle East.  What has come to be known as the Arab Spring has already forced two leaders from their posts, Tunisian president Ben Ali and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, following mass protests calling for political change.  Colonel Gadaffi of Libya is dead and low level conflicts continue in Syria and Algeria.

The spark that ignited the Arab Spring is the death of one man – Mohamed Bouazizi – the Tunisian flower seller who set fire to himself (self-immolation) and died 18 days later. The question or course is what drove a flower seller in the town of Sidi Bouzid to take his own life as a form of protest?

Locally known as Basboosa, Bouazizi was born in 1984 in Sidi Bouzid, was educated until his late teens and then began to work full time to help support his six brothers and sisters and his mother.  Sidi Bouzid seems to have been a town riven by corruption and unemployment and Bouazizi had suffered from mistreatment by the local authorities for years.  Harassed by police because he didn’t have a permit to sell flowers (even though it seems one was not necessary), he would join in the usual bribing of officers to ensure he continued to sell and make a living.

On the 16th December, indebted from the purchase of stock, Bouazizi was unable to pay the police and an altercation started involving a local government official, Faida Hamdi. Hamdi is alleged to have humiliated Bouazizi, slapping him, spitting in his face and confiscating his scales.  Appalled by this insult from a female official, Bouazizi made his way to the governor’s office to complain and get his scales back; when the governor refused to acknowledge him, Bouazizi threatened to set himself on fire.  Obtaining a can of petrol from a nearby petrol station, he stood in the road outside the office, shouted “how do you expect me to make a living?” then set fire to himself.

Following Bouazizi’s death at the end of January, protests began locally that spread nationally and then internationally, resulting in the political changes that have engulfed several countries in the region.  The flower seller is now a hero, squares in Tunis and Paris and have been named after him and he was posthumously awarded the Sakharov Prize (for freedom of though) in 2011.

Protests in Sidi Bouzid

Elsewhere on this site we would normally feature individuals who have become world renowned for their selfless deeds.  Figures such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa and more contemporary people such as the Burmese political activist Aung San Suu Kyi are globally renowned.  However there are others who perform selfless, vital work in their local environments who do not look for recognition and quite often receive none.

Oscar Aranda

Oscar Aranda is an impressive individual; a resident of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico and someone who has made an enormous difference to the local environment.  Many such people experience one moment which acts as a turning point in their lives and Aranda is no different.  Always interested in wildlife, he had studied biology in college and gained an interest in sea creatures.

Turtle Eggs

The moment which launched him on his career however did not happen until some years later when he was called by the police to the beachfront where they had come across a turtle in a bucket, chopped to pieces and, as Aranda explained, with “his heart still pounding.”  The police had no idea what to do with the scene in front of them and of course there was nothing Aranda could do to save the turtle but it did prompt him to begin a campaign to protect the turtles in that area.

Turtle poaching is a serious problem in Mexico but the authorities believe there is no real profit motive in stealing turtle eggs.  One egg sells for about 50 cents so nobody gets rich by stealing turtle eggs.  It appears to be the lure of eating a forbidden thing, or perhaps the myth that the egg is an aphrodisiac which makes the continued egg poaching such a problem.  The Mexican government has responded to the problem by increasing financial penalties for those caught killing, poaching or trafficking turtles but the problem still remains.

Vallarta Rescue

Oscar Aranda first saw that dead turtle more than ten years ago and since then he has patrolled the turtle nesting areas along Mexico’s north west Pacific beaches, protecting them from the poaching which still continues.  The nesting season runs from June to December.  Aranda is an unpaid activist but he is not the only one;  in 2004 he started Vallarta Rescue, an organisation dedicated to protecting the turtles in this area.  He now oversees a number of volunteers who give up their nights to protect the eggs.

Protecting the turtles is an interactive process; the watcher will clear a path for the pregnant turtle to come out of the water in the dark and lay her eggs.  When the turtle has buried her newly laid eggs and returned to the sea the Vallarta Rescue operators will dig up the eggs and take them to a special hatchery located at nearby Marriott Hotel.

This arrangement works well for both parties – the eggs are cared for in a protected space and in return Vallarta Rescue offers turtle conservation talks and opportunities to see the eggs hatching to the hotel’s guests.  At certain times guests are even able to take part in the release of a baby turtle which is something, says Aranda, “that they will never forget.”

Ponheary Ly

with another Cambodian we’ve written about – Aki Ra the mine clearer – is her focus on the welfare of children.  Every family in Cambodia has tales from the reign of the Khmer Rouge and Ponheary Ly is no exception.  She lost thirteen members of her family during Pol Pot’s rule and following the demise of the Khmer Rouge Ly, her mother and her six siblings were on their own.

Finding a job as a teacher in 1982, Ly worked with fellow teachers to help provide books for schools and education for those children who couldn’t afford it.  Primary education in Cambodia is free but uniforms, books and transport to schools are not and Ly recognised that many children living in poverty could just not afford to be educated.

A gifted linguist – Ly speaks five languages – she became an Angkor tour guide to earn more money in the 1990s as the first tourists were beginning to arrive.  It was while she was working here that she began to notice the many children begging at the temples, not to mention the children she saw in the countryside who were not being educated at all.

She used her wages and tip money to donate to local families to enable them to go to school and it was a chance meeting in 2005 which propelled the charity work to the next level.  Lori Carlson was an American tourist, guided round the temples by Ly, who began to take an interest in the cause and, on return to the States, set up a fund to help Ponheary Ly in her work.

Lori Carlson

Eventually Carlson moved to Cambodia permanently to help run the charity and it now supports some 2000 children in four schools in one of the poorest areas of Cambodia. Because of the extra income from the United States, children now receive uniforms, medical checks and breakfast; the older ones sometimes get bicycles for transportation.  Teachers wages are also occasionally supplemented to ensure a more consistent teaching experience for the children.

It’s a problem which seems to affect some African countries more than other areas of the world and it’s one which has criminally held  back the treatment of HIV victims in the worst affected places.  That problem is the view that HIV is some sort of punishment from God, a plague on those who do not conform to what are regarded as societal norms.

In Kenya in the 1990s, that was Patricia Sawo’s view when she was a senior church figure in Kitale, western Kenya.  She recalls: “I though it was a moral issue and a punishment for the disobedient.”

In 1999 that all changed when she awoke one morning to find herself suffering from the telltale symptoms of an HIV infection.  She arranged for a test which confirmed her worst fears that she was HIV positive, a condition possibly contracted from a blood transfusion. It still took some years however for her views to move away from the religious influences which had moulded her outlook.  She relied on years of praying and fasting to try and rid herself of the infection, all to no avail.

It was not until her condition began to become public that she finally realised the way sufferers were stigmatised and that she herself had been a driver of that view.  She and her husband were evicted from their home and lost their jobs, her role within the churhc also came to an end.  Even a small business which they started suffered once customers became aware of her status as an HIV sufferer.

Handicap International

Subsequently she became aware of an organisation called Handicap International, a UK based group which offers support to those suffering from disease and disabilities all over the world, including Kenya.  Importantly they also offer accurate information regarding AIDS and HIV.

By 2002, Patrica Sawo had become ordained as a minister and been involved in starting ANERELA+ (now INERELA+), an organisation consisting of religious leaders affected by HIV.  She used her preaching influence to try and promote issues and best practice surrounding the subject.  She also realised that part of the battle was with the church itself, saying “….the church must change it’s attitude.  HIV is not a moral issue, it’s a virus.”

Discover to Recover Centre

By 2005 she and her husband had established the Discover to Recover Centre, a place for adults to receive palliative care.  As the adults gradually died, the children of those sufferers remained and the home became a centre for orphaned children.  Forty eight children, some also HIV sufferers, now live at the centre in fairly basic accommodation, receiving education as well as shelter while more are cared for in their own homes.

On top of all this Sawo is also a trained counselor for those struggling to come to terms with the infection.  She relies almost exclusively on charitable donations from an American non-profit organisation called Hope Span and hopes to expand her operation when the opportunity presents itself.  She retains her spirituality of course and her view now is that HIV has “….made me a better person.  God has his own way of healing……so for me I’m healed.”