Moore '06 knows when to Hold 'Em

First it was campus rap fans, then high schoolers with Ivy-League dreams; now, poker players will know the name of Robert Moore '06.

Moore recently developed his Mooraculator software, which conveniently calculates Texas Hold 'Em odds in realtime, into a handheld version that is now being sold in Sharper Image stores across the country.

It's just the latest in a number of ventures by Moore, an operations research and financial engineering major who is also responsible for the P-Unit rap video, an addictive student image website called whatsmyimage.com and an admissions advice site called YesLetter.com.

"Everything he touches seems to take off," said Adam Ludwig '06, one of the co-founders of YesLetter.com. "I've wondered myself sometimes if he's human."

The deal with Sharper Image started when Moore sent a copy of a Daily Princetonian article highlighting his Mooraculator to Jim Lesser at JDL companies, where he had interned the summer after his freshman year.

"Jim has a dream job and makes money like you and I breathe," Moore said. "He said to me 'I've got a really good friend who owns this company that is an importer of electronic equipment and they've been trying to develop something like this in a handheld version.' "

With the help of Lesser's connections, Moore upgraded his Mooraculator to the Texas Hold 'Em Odds Calculator, a more portable, hand-held version. The undertaking took four months, and production of the calculator began in June.

"Lots of improvements came out of it," Moore said. "One thing in particular was that the new product not only tells you the percent chance of winning a hand, it also tells you the chance of ending up with any type of hand. In addition, there's an entirely new mode of play called ESPN mode."

Moore was hired as a consultant on the project while the programming for the device was outsourced to China. The programmers, who had already developed a handheld poker game for Sharper Image, worked closely with Moore, who released the rights of his algorithms to Lesser.

"I would go to lunch, break before class and communicate with the guys at the development house in China to improve the algorithms and figure out what we wanted to do," Moore said. "It was pretty fortunate that I'm an ORFE major. Some techniques to make it work were stuff I was literally learning that day. I would go to class in the morning and learn how to run simulations and create data and would literally tell them what I had learned that day."

Not only was the experience rewarding, but Moore also receives a royalty on every Texas Hold 'Em Odds Calculator sold through Sharper Image — and eventually other companies as well.

"Overall it's just been a fantastic experience. And I'm not too concerned about any kind of risk. Nothing can really bring me down at this point," Moore said.

Beyond Texas Hold 'Em

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Some of Moore's projects grew out of the classroom. These include the immensely popular P-Unit video, a project for his ENG 231 class, and whatsmyimage.com, created for COS 333.

Others were started outside of class, including YesLetter.com, a college admissions website staffed by Ivy League students who offer quality online college counseling at a fraction of the usual price. It has caught the attention of The New York Times and Newsweek.

Moore, along with Ludwig, started YesLetter.com for a University business idea contest, and since then the pair has seen the site continue to grow.

"We were both very entrepreneurial by nature, and part of nature of the beast is that we keep starting these new projects and coming up with new things," Moore said. "The money we make is proportional to the effort we put into it."

More about Moore

Though Moore's accomplishments would seem to give him an almost untouchable aura, the people that know him or have met him all describe him as very modest.

Brian Cho '06, who roomed with Moore for two years in Wilson College, has seen Moore's progression and believes that his personality has remained unchanged.

"When I first met him, he just seemed like a regular kid to me," Cho said in an email. "He had a very down-to-earth kind of personality and was very easy to get along with. And he has stayed true to that observation through the years at Princeton. Despite all the things he has done that has gotten him attention from the local press, he has remained the same as he was the first day I met him."

But underneath Moore's modesty lies a business-savvy instinct of which some students expressed awe.

"Sometimes I feel like things come too easy for Rob," Cho said. "His ideas and projects really come from his everyday life and experiences. I've never seen him actually sit down and try to come up with ideas. He just somehow capitalizes on his life experiences and comes out with an idea that he pursues until he has a finished product."

Moore has chosen poker as his senior thesis project, and will be working on a way to expand his software so that it can apply to no-limit poker. After graduation, he'll be working for a venture capital company in New York City where he hopes to learn what types of ideas companies are willing to invest in.

"It's a matter of not caring or feeling like you're working even if you are," he said. "If you're willing to put in that much work, follow your heart. It's slightly cheesy but that's what it is."