Phil Gordon

Born July 6th, 1970, Phil Gordon is known in poker circles as ‘the other Phil’.  Stepping in at 6’9” tall, Gordon presents a bigger picture than his physical size portrays.  

Phil finished 4th in the WSOP 2001 Main event, claiming $400,000 and he made two more WSOP final tables—taking 6th place in the $2,000 PL Hold’em event and 3rd place in the $2,500 Omaha Hi/Lo event.  He also claimed 3rd place in the $1,500 NL Hold’em shootout event in 2005 but has yet to win a bracelet.  In WSOP events, to date, Phil has won over $640,000.

Gordon won the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Tournament in 2004 by knocking out to players at once and also took the professional division of the first UltimateBet Aruba tournament.  He lost the event to Juha Helppi, the amateur division’s winner.  Gordon has scored in other tournament events and has winnings in excess of $1,700,000 with time on his side to build that total.

In 1991 Phil graduated Georgia Tech with a degree in computer science.  He joined Netsys Technologies as the first hired employee and when Cisco Systems acquired Netsys, he became a millionaire and retired from the industry in 1997.  He wanted to travel the world and play poker.

Gordon’s involvement in poker includes carrying Pro status on Full Tilt Poker; commentary on poker broadcasts—Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown—as well as commentary for ESPN’s live pay per view broadcast of  2006 and 2007 WSOP main event championship; hosting a pod cast and writing a regular column—The Poker Edge—for ESPN.com; and authoring books on poker and writing for poker magazines.
 
Phil has also won two national bridge competitions and he has been profiled in the bridge column of the New York Times on August 16th, 2008.

Phil raises funds for cancer research through Roshambo tournaments and donating his time for private lessons and autographed books that find all proceeds going to the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation—exclusively available at the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation website.  He’s continually promoting ‘Bad Beat on Cancer’ and helped form the beginning of the initiative at the 2003 WSOP.