Posts Tagged ‘boston debate league’

The Boston Marathon is the most prestigious and oldest continuously-run marathon in the entire world. Many people dream of running it, but participation is extremely limited and exclusive. The only way to get a spot is either to qualify with a world-class time in a different marathon or to earn a waiver by raising money for select local charities.

I’m proud to announce that the Boston Debate League, a non-profit organization that I founded 5 years ago and on whose Board I now serve, has been selected as one of these charities. If any of you, or anyone you know, is interested in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run the Boston Marathon and support a valuable cause, please e-mail me (andrew@thinkingpoker.net) for more information. Running for our team will get you weekly training and advice from a professional coach and the opportunity to share this experience with other motivated individuals like yourself. And the best part is, you don’t have to be an experienced distance runner already- that’s what the training is for!  Read the complete post...

Maryland-based freelance reporter Bill Ordine recently penned an article for the LA Times entitled “Poker Professionals Ante Up for Charity“. While it’s primarily about high-profile projects like Ante Up for Africa and Bad Beat on Cancer, he uses yours truly as an example of smaller scale philanthropy enabled by poker:

“But the 26-year-old Brokos’ real passion isn’t poker. It’s coaching inner-city schoolkids in the art of debate. When he couldn’t get a paying job in education pursuing his interest in forensics, he used his poker winnings to support himself while he started the Boston Debate League, which has grown from three schools in 2005 to eight. Impressed with Brokos’ bootstrap work, the city school system provided funding for a full-time executive director to run the league, but Brokos continues to donate his time several days a week — with poker remaining as his means of support.”  Read the complete post...

The Boston Debate League’s Fifth Annual City Championships took place over the weekend, and it was a great event. Nearly sixty students competed, which is actually a little low compared to the numbers we’ve had recently, but their enthusiasm more than made up for it. In the Varsity division, the reigning City Champions narrowly defended their title against a very promising upstart team. Meanwhile, a young school found a much-needed morale boost by closing out the JV division (that is to say, they won first and second place).

The BDL also got its first mention, and a fairly substantial one at that, in the Boston Globe, the city’s most prominent daily paper. The reporter did a nice job speaking with a variety of students, coaches, and administrators, and ultimately presented two of our most important themes: that debate is a rigorous academic activity that students nonetheless enjoy, and that it attracts all types of students, not only those who are already high achievers.  Read the complete post...

The Boston Herald ran an article this morning about the Boston Debate League and one of its member schools which was nearly closed by the school district:

The debate team at the Academy of Public Service sailed into the “elite eight” last year at the national championships in Chicago.

Now, thanks to that oratorical success, the debaters have talked their way into another year of funding as their school merges with the nearby Noonan Business Academy in Codman Square.

“The output of the debate team was a big part of the decision,” said team coach Locksley Bryan. “They saw these kids doing academic calisthenics at a very high level and it impressed them.”  Read the complete post...

Had a decent morning at the tables but the real brag is for the Boston Debate League, which was awarded today a $50,000 grant from the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Foundation. The grant will support the BDL’s work with debate programs in the Boston Public Schools over the next two years, most especially that of the League’s new director (who’s probably reading this- congratulations, Steve!).

Here’s another random brag, this one from the Stars weekly $500. Sorry was having trouble with the converter, basically I had an open-ended draw on the turn and overbet shoved when a flush card came on the river:

PokerStars Game #21709641365: Tournament #116152197, $500+$30 Hold’em No Limit - Level III (100/200) - 2008/11/02 18:23:05 ET
Table ‘116152197 23′ 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: nofingclue11 (11900 in chips)
Seat 2: tiger76 (9370 in chips)
Seat 3: jesseluke82 (5480 in chips)
Seat 4: berra86 (13699 in chips)
Seat 5: lowlife039 (13250 in chips)
Seat 6: Mia_121 (9276 in chips)
Seat 7: Joao M. (10835 in chips)
Seat 8: foucault82 (8390 in chips)
Seat 9: Psychout (8600 in chips)  Read the complete post...

Didn’t get many NLHE cash games in this month. The month started with FTOPS, so I was playing more tournaments than usual. It wasn’t a good series for me, but I was doing alright on the side. Then I spent the second half of the month running a summer camp for the BDL (hence the slow pace of posting- that will pick up next week). When I was directing the League, so much of my job was like administration, management, politicking, advocacy, and I rarely spent time actually working with students. Generally, working with them was like the amphetamine that got me excited and kept me going through the more tedious work.  Read the complete post...

I’ll lead off with the big one. My girlfriend pointed out to me that although a few people posted it as a comment, I hadn’t actually made a post that included my finish at the World Series of Poker. Out of 6,844 players, I finished 35th and won $193,000. How sexy is this?

The check is for $191,000 because I left a $2000 tip for the dealers. That might seem like a lot, but 1% is pretty standard, and remember that you only tip when you cash, so in some sense the 10% who make the money are tipping for the 90% who did not as well as for themselves. It’s kind of a screwy system, but that’s how it works.  Read the complete post...

Hey, a winning month! Maybe I am not so bad at this game after all. There are still a few days to go, but I probably won’t be playing much if at all. As you may have noticed, I haven’t been playing the last few days either. I leave for Las Vegas on July 1st, and once out there I’ll obviously be devoting quite a lot of time to poker, so I’m buckling down now on some of my other projects.

Granted I’m about to turn around and spend all of June’s winnings in Las Vegas, but I was going to play the main event anyway, so the winnings are still very meaningful. And if you count staking profits, June turns into a damn fine month.

I was playing smaller stakes, though deep-stacked, and ran at about 4 BB/100 over 19K hands.  Read the complete post...