Verneer Charity Grind Interview

CardRunners instructor Verneer joins our newsmaker hotline to discuss his charity drive to turn a $200 bankroll on Full Tilt Poker into $10,000 and give it all away to charity. Verneer is planning to not just catalog his climb in the micro-stakes games but also make training videos to watch on CardRunners so that people can emulate his rise and grind out a big bankroll for themselves as well.

Verneer, known in real life as Pawel Nazarewicz, is a former mathematics teacher who became a pro poker player in 2008. His start in poker began in graduate school where he watched CardRunners videos and used that to solidly beat 100nl and 200nl games, which is where Verneer continues to play to this day. He is a huge advocate of a healthy lifestyle and limits his hours in order to dedicate time to study, running and charity work.

When asked about his $10,000 micro-stakes charity grind, Verneer said, “Last year I started with a $100 bankroll and was able to grind it up to a couple of thousand dollars. I talked about my process on TwoPlusTwo and CardRunners. I think that the games are changing all the time and what is working 12 months ago may not work in this day and age. I just put in a lot of volume at these stakes.”

While grinding 5,000 hands during a single day has given him the start he’s needed to show what it takes to win at various stakes. But why is he doing this? Verneer answered, “The reason I decided donating the money to charity … we decided we would like to give more money away in 2011. I was inspired by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates … if they can give away a good chunk of their fortunes, there’s no reason why I can’t do the same… I’m in one of those fortunate situations where I am not hungry and I live in a comfortable house. We’re good and we don’t have a lot of expenses so it turned into something I wanted to do.”

You can follow Verneer’s climb up the micros through his blog posts which you can find at CardRunners. You can also watch a completely free video called “Mt. Micro Part 2” by Verneer which is an update in this quest.

CardRunners is home to the largest archive of micro and small stakes cash videos. Verneer leads the charge with series like Climbing Mt. Micro and Destination: Small Stakes No Limit.