Remembering the life Max Chiswick aka Chisness | A legacy far beyond the poker tables

Max Chiswick, affectionately known as "Chisness," left a lasting legacy that extended far beyond his skill at the poker tables. He will be remembered for his charisma, generosity, and the impact he had on those who knew him.

This is so sad. We were very close through poker for a bunch of years, talking nearly every day. The piece above says it better than I can, and I will always remember him as a kind, warm and unique person in the best way anyone can possibly be.

This is extremely tragic. I didn't know Max back when he played poker professionally, but I was very close with him during the past several years.

His personal website has information on many of the various projects he was working on https://maxchiswick.com/.

One project that he had been particularly excited about for the past few years was running a "poker camp" designed to teach people about topics in probability, game theory, and AI using poker as the motivating example. In his words, "Poker Camp is a program to learn about probability, game theory, AI, and decision making under uncertainty through the lens of poker." https://poker.camp/

It had been a passion project of his for several years, but he never had any clear answers when I asked about the target audience, logistics, etc. I was always encouraging towards it, but in the back of my mind was pretty skeptical that it would end up panning out. Fortunately he was able to run his camp successfully in the Bay area last summer, and also run some smaller versions of in NYC later in the year. I know that he had a lot of ideas for improving it and had several more editions of it planned for next year. Hopefully his co-founder can find a way to continue it.

I was fortunate to have hung out with him several times in the past few months. He stopped by Miami Beach in December for Art Basel and we played tennis and discussed one of the projects were working on. And in October I persuaded him to come out of his poker retirement and play at Parx for the first time (he was finally getting settled to move permanently to NYC), and he offered to drive me from Bensalem to NYC to attend an event.

In December he went to Singapore to present a paper we worked on at a conference. I was surprised to get a call from him at 3am the night he was planning to fly out (from SF). He said they were offering a $1500 voucher for volunteers to switch flights, and we were performing a detailed analysis of the pros and cons (though in the end it was moot since the offer ended up getting revoked).

The article linked in the OP was incredibly spot on. A typical conversation with him might go something like:
Me: "Hey, are you still in Chicago?"
Him: "I'm heading back there tomorrow, I had to stop in Charlotte because I found a really good deal on a couch. I'm only staying for a few days because I'm going to a tennis tournament and conference in SF next week before I fly out to Central African Republic for 2 weeks. By the way, are you going to be in Miami next month? I may be in town for a few days after I get back from Israel."

And the crazy part is that despite this he would always text or call back immediately if he missed one of my calls, regardless of where he was or what he was doing.

I think Max was a perfect example of how making a significant amount of money from poker at a young age can allow people to make unique and significant impacts on the world. Beyond poker he was also very interested in impactful areas such as AI safety and it would have been really cool to see what he was able to accomplish. I was fortunate to have collaborated on 3 projects with him that turned into publications. One was on a new rule for poker strategy that outperforms the "minimum defense frequency rule," another was on opponent exploitation (which is what he presented in Singapore), and a third was on predicting intervals (e.g., a "forecast cone") for storms and hurricanes. He had a very broad technical skillset as well as big picture visions and interests and I'm sure he would have made many more lasting impacts on various important problems. He was accepted at Technion's PhD program in computer science several years ago, though decided not to attend (I don't blame him since starting a PhD in your mid-30s has some clear drawbacks).

The story is particularly tragic because Max was so health conscious and I'm sure took all of the reasonable precautions he could have. He has been to Africa many times. The scariest part about malaria is that the symptoms can be the same as a cold/flu. He apparently was jet-lagged and had just gone on a long hike in the desert, so naturally he assumed he was just tired and went to sleep. Malaria can be treated by antibiotics if detected quickly, but sadly he didn't realize he had it until it was too late.