Phil Gordon

Phil "Tiltboy" Gordon: A guy who has been there and seen it all. That is how one could describe Philip Stewart Gordon. After all, not many in this world, least of all the poker world, can claim having swum with the Great White Sharks off the island of Zanzibar, climbing the almost half-a-kilometer high Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania or playing footsie with the giant gorillas in Uganda. Phil has covered 20,000 kilometers in a Land Cruiser in Australia, waving to kangaroos and wallabies passing by. He has trekked the Inca trail in the South Americas, wondering at how the Incas might have subsisted in the dense jungles.

Phil Gordon has lived life to the fullest. King-size, as they say in the advertisements. Whatever he does, he does it with élan and chutzpah. At the age of 15, Phil reached the finals of the National Merit Scholarship. By the time he was twenty, Phil graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in Computer Science. Lockheed Missiles and Space picked up this prodigy from the campus, and Phil Gordon began his working career in 1989.

Barely two years later, entrepreneur Herb Madan enticed him with the position of software architect of his startup company, Netsys Technologies at Palo Alto in California. In 1996 -1997, however, thanks to the boom in LAN and WAN market, the company was purchased lock, stock and barrel by Cisco Systems for $95 million. This transaction made Phil Gordon a rich man overnight. Not wanting to work with a new employer, however, Phil decided to take life by the horns, and began his adventures across six continents and fifty countries. After five years and several thousands of miles, Phil finally grew tired and returned to his home country, the United States, to settle in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

What to do, next? Phil pondered for awhile. A retired young man, with lots of bank balance …? He looked around, and his gaze fell on the glitzy, glamorous world of Poker that was beginning to make waves in the media and the internet, catching the imagination of an entire nation.

After brushing up his basics, Phil paid the $10,000 required to participate in the WSOP Championship event in 2001, his very first participation in a major tournament. With his characteristic nonchalant style, he struck gold here too! Coming fourth in a closely fought tournament, Phil picked up $399,610 for his efforts. The win dazzled the media and brought him a brief interview on the Travel Channel documentary.

Enthused by this success, Phil delved deep into the poker world. The next year, 2002, saw him win the WSOP $2,000 Pot Limit Hold’em at 6th position, followed by the WSOP $2,500 Omaha Hi/Lo Split event at 3rd. The Ultimate Bet Poker Classic tournament in the WPT series was organized at Palm Beach later that year, and Phil flew down to pick up the fifth position there, too.

By now, people had become familiar with his towering framework of 6’ 9” strolling around the poker tables. His greatest success in Poker thus far has been the first position at the WPT $5,000 No limit Hold’em event in 2004, where he won a purse of $360,000. To date Phil has already increased his bank balance by a hefty $1,100,000 playing in poker tournaments.

Turning to writing, Phil has authored three books on the game thus far, and there are very many pieces of literature in him, raring to come out. If god makes all men equal. Phil is perhaps the first amongst equals.