Rafe Furst

Rafael M. Furst is an American professional poker player, based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Before poker
Before becoming a professional poker player, Furst was a web entrepreneur in online games and promotions, and before that a computer science researcher specializing in artificial intelligence. Furst holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and M.S. in Computer Science, both from Stanford University.

Poker playing
At the 2003 World Series of Poker, Rafe gained a small measure of infamy when he was eliminated first from the $10,000 Main Event, lasting only 11 minutes.

In 2005, Furst finished first in the $1,500 no limit Texas hold 'em Ultimate Poker Challenge. Furst also finished 5th in a Ladies Only poker event at Bay101 dressed in drag.

Furst picked up his first World Series of Poker bracelet in 2006 when he won a $1,500 pot limit hold'em preliminary event. Rafe beat over 1100 other players to win almost $350,000 in that one event.

Furst is also an exclusive professional poker player at Full Tilt Poker, an online poker website that opened in July 2004.

As of 2008, his total live tournament winnings exceed $440,000.

Other interests
Furst spent several years doing research and putting together multi-million dollar joint ventures in Silicon Valley at Kestrel Institute. Following his dream of weaving sports and entrepreneurship, Furst has notably formed Pick’em Sports in 1996 to bring promotional sports contests to the then-nascent World Wide Web.

Rafe has an interest in complex systems and blogs about it actively.

He is also one of the founders of a new educational media company called Expert Insight, where he spends most of his time these days.

Poker journalism
Furst is the first member of the Tiltboys, a group that started a weekly poker game in college that still exists 17 years later. Along with Phil Gordon, he was featured on a national public radio show called "This American Life" during the 2001 World Series of Poker (WSOP). Gordon and Furst were also the first to give daily national radio updates from the WSOP in 2003 on Sporting News Radio.

While travelling the country during the Ultimate Sports Adventure, he proselytized for the poker lifestyle and discussed poker in over a hundred different radio, newspaper and television interviews across the U.S. and Canada.

Cancer Research
Furst has been keen to carry out fundraising as a Board Member of the Prevention Cancer Foundation, a charity he has supported since he and fellow poker pro, Phil Gordon, embarked on their Ultimate Sports Adventure tour in 2003-04. Their most successful initiative, Bad Beat on Cancer, asks members of the greater poker community to pledge 1% of their poker winnings to cancer prevention and early detection.