Unofficial site about Phil Gordon

• Phil Gordon was born in El Paso, Texas on June 6th 1970.
• He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology at only 20 years old.
• Gordon is a former software engineer.
• Phil Gordon stands a whopping 6 feet 9 inches tall.
• Married with one son, Gordon lives in Las Vegas Nevada.

Phil Gordon credits his great-aunt Lib with teaching him how to play poker. He remembers he and his sister spending their summers with her and playing penny-ante Five Card Draw at the kitchen table every night they were there. One particularly fond memory is of his great-aunt shuffling like a true card shark and flicking the deal to the children while declaring that "whores, fours and one-eyed jacks are wild."

His early academic and career history however were about as far removed from poker as it is possible to be. He was an extremely accomplished student and at 15 was awarded a National Merit Scholarship. This meant that he left high school to go straight to college, and he attended the Georgia Institute of Technology (a prestigious technical school) to study Computer Science. At only 20, he graduated, worked with companies like Lockheed and eventually became the first hired employee of Netsys Technologies Inc., when Netsys was a mere start-up. A computer whiz-kid, he has worked on a variety of projects, including artificial intelligence enterprises for the military. When the dot-com bubble burst, Netsys was bought by Cisco systems for US$96 million in cash and stocks. Phil Gordon did very well out of this deal as part of his employment contract with Netsys had included shares in the company and overnight he became a millionaire.

After the acquisition, Gordon made the decision to travel. Although this was not such an unconventional decision at first glance, Phil Gordon’s idea of travelling was to build a raft made out of balsa and float down the Amazon. This and other off beat adventures took him around the world on a trip that lasted almost 6 years, 50 countries and five continents.

During his travels Gordon had stayed in touch with poker, playing in a variety of locations and earning himself enough status to be invited to commentate on a World Series of Poker event. He had unobtrusively turned professional and had played with enough celebrities that he co-hosted Celebrity Poker Showdown, a high-rating series on the cable network Bravo.

As well as playing poker, Gordon has a self-confessed love of teaching and as well as tutoring friends, family and acquaintances on the finer points of the game has also released a series of books. The Real Deal, his first foray into writing, sold almost 100,000 copies and he quickly followed up with other titles, including the phenomenally successful The Little Green Book of No-Limit Hold’em which his website claims has been hailed as the "definitive strategy guide to No Limit Hold'Em." It is this passion for sharing the game that has helped raise the profile of poker world-wide and Gordon is partially credited with the resurgence of poker’s popularity in the early 2000’s.

Furthering his business dealings, he has also released an instructional DVD, launched during the 2005 World Series of Poker.

For pure poker-playing achievement, it is difficult to overlook Phil Gordon. He finished fourth in the World Series of Poker championship event in 2001, scoring a massive $399,610 to add to his already tidy nest-egg. One patron was apparently willing to add $390 to the pot out of his own pocket to bring the total to a clean $400,000. More cash and tournament wins followed in the ensuing years and in 2004 he won the World Poker Tour’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament.

That tournament was not only notable for his $360,000 win. It was also the setting for he and his fellow Tiltboys (a little like a prankster version of the Rat-Pack) dressing in drag to play a women-only tournament. ‘Phyllis Gordon’ was apparently dressed in great taste, complete with stockings and pumps although it’s not clear how he managed to find a pair that fit the feet of a 6’9” man. Unfortunately they were disqualified from the event, with director Matt Savage proposing that in future “panty checks” may be necessary before game commencement. According to rumour, one observer of the game suggested that the Tiltboys try to stay away from the phrase “I’m holding the nuts.”

One of the few poker players in the world to successfully cross over from professional success to celebrity in his own right, Phil Gordon is a well-known face on television and in other media. He has been affiliated with Full Tilt Poker for a number of years and like all the Full Tilt pros such as Erick Lindgren and John Juanda he plays online poker exclusively on that site.

He has used his celebrity status for worthy causes as well, raising money for cancer research through “The Bad Beat of Cancer” initiative. This is a drive by the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation to raise funding for and awareness of, cancer research. Gordon is an active spokesperson for the foundation as well as being a board member, a passion sparked by the death of his great aunt Lib in 2002. His altruism and ‘No-Limits,’ joyful approach to life is something he credits her with.

• Gordon, along with a group of friends once dressed in drag to play in a women-only poker tournament.
• He was a child prodigy, winning a scholarship that enabled him to leave high school early and go straight to college. Because of this his mother calls him a “genius juvenile delinquent.”
• Between his career in computer science and his career in poker, he built a balsa raft and floated down the Amazon River.
• He once judged a wet t-shirt contest in Australia.