Poker News

Phil Gordon

What would Phil Gordon have been without the driving power of the Internet and television’s love affair with poker?

A winning poker player, probably. Remember those strong early-on finishes in World Series and World Poker Tour events.

Let’s also add successful and wealthy. He had made millions in the high-tech business before deciding in the late 1990s to devote more time to both travel and his fascination with poker.

But a familiar face on tv, a successful author, a personality in demand as a speaker and lecturer?

Well . . . who knows.

What’s certain is that television and the Internet have fueled the insatiable appetite of global audiences for information about how to become winners at the table. The same influences created opportunities for people able to satisfy this demand.

Enter Phil Gordon.

Good looks, smarts and the ability to speak effectively in front of an audience are not everything, but they certainly help And by then Gordon had already displayed his ability to play winning poker.

“Right now,” he says, “I’m enjoying teaching more than I am playing the game . . . I love the speaking appearances and the seminars and the writing, doing Celebrity Poker. This is a lot more fun than going out and trying to beat 850 people in a poker tournament.”

Casual poker buffs may be most familiar with Gordon as the co-host of Bravo’s successful Celebrity Poker Showdown. It’s a role he was tapped for after several successful tournament finishes. These included fourth place in the WSOP’s 2001 main event and two final table finishes at the 2002 World Series. They combined to produce the notice that brought him an invitation to play in the professional division of the World Poker Tour’s first tournament in Aruba.

He went all in, so to speak. Yes, winning in Aruba.

The sudden result was visibility as a personality with a talent for something more than playing the game. He was a young up tempo counterpoint to those aging poker pioneers whose explanations of Texas hold ‘em were couched in the anecdotes and sounds of the south.

He led the expert analysis for an Internet broadcast of the 2003 World Series and also contributed radio reports, subsequently becoming the focus of stories for a variety of magazines and electronic outlets.

More recently he’s been talking with Harrah’s about a possible role that could help the company add additional polish to the World Series brand. Neither Harrah’s nor Gordon are ready to discuss this yet.

The Harrah’s attitude toward the World Series can best be characterized as that of a mother goose guarding a golden egg. A source familiar with the company’s thinking at the highest levels confided, “Phil is a great spokesman for poker.”

Which sort of says it all. “I’ve never claimed to be the best poker player in the world,” Gordon explains, “but I have been a winner and I enjoy telling people about the approach I’ve taken.”

The not so subtle implication: Here’s the way I do it. Maybe you can too . . . if you’re sufficiently dedicated and aggressive.

Gordon’s official bio describes this dot-com millionaire as taking the poker world by storm scene in 2001 when he finished fourth in the main event at the World Series of Poker, just a year after he first took a stab at poker’s premiere event.

His success in high profile tournaments opened doorways to opportunities that have so far included two books - Poker: The Real Deal and the more recent Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book.

Look up overnight success ina dictionary and you may find a picture of Gordon, flashing that confident winner’s smile, as he has been doing for much of his life.

He was close to wrapping up a Green Book promotional tour when he stopped for a few minutes of conversation on the telephone from Seattle.

Gordon was a National Merit Scholarship finalist when he entered college at the age of 15. He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology at the age of 20 and spent the next two years at Lockheed Missiles before joining Netsys Technology as its lead software engineer and first employee. Three years later in 1996 Cisco Systems bought Netsys for $95 million.

Gordon was faced with the opportunity for serious thought about what he’d do with the rest of his life and, yes, money was no object. Why not take a closeup look at the rest of the world?

Which is what Gordon did, spending the next several years traveling, covering about 50 countries and six continents from Australia to Africa and dozens of points in between, returning home occasionally for a little poker.

Gordon had always nursed an interest in poker, playing when he could, when the demands of business allowed, thinking that the lifestyle had a definite appeal. When the traveling was completed and the continents and countries reduced to hours of anecdotes, endless memories and thousands of pictures, poker felt like a natural next step.

“It has worked out well since that decision.”

All right, so the man has a knack for under-statements.

He was living at Lake Tahoe, commuting to Vegas “fairly regularly,” playing limits such as 15-30 and 30-60.

“I was a recreational player, like a lot of other people and no where near good enough to play at the highest levels. I had a lot to learn.”

Which is what he began to do.

At last count his tournament winnings are north of a million.

But how did poker bring him to television?

“I got into tv, I think, by winning and showing a personality that people thought would translate well to television. Celebrity Poker Showdown was created about the time I won that first World Poker Tourtournament in Aruba, and people had just seen me on the World Series of Poker.”

Gordon was suggested as an analyst for Showdown by a friend who played in a home game with one of the program’s originators. One conversation led to another, as usually happens, and, suddenly, there Gordon was - smiling into the camera, talking about poker as though he had been doing it all his life.

Did he have any doubts about the job?

“I didn’t think the show was going to be as successful as it has been. The original contract called for six episodes. I thought it would be kind of fun to give it a shot. You know, meet some Hollywood celebrities. I had talked about poker on tv, but I certainly did not expect it to be as popular as it is.”

Gordon remains focused for the moment on his justreleased Green Book - “the reviews have been spectacular.” Down the road he has another project in mind.

“The one thing people really seem to want is more hands. I don’t discuss a lot of hand-by-hand analysis (in Green Book). So I’m giving consideration to a sequel that would be based on hands from real life, hands I’ve played in a tournament or two andmaybe on-line.”

It might also include hands from Celebrity Poker and how they relate to the lessons and attitudes discussed in Little Green Book.

Gordon writes in Green Book about qualities shared by all the great players he has ever played with or against. They include aggressiveness, the ability to be observant, courage, patience. He writes about the respect he’s gained for that certain four-letter word, the one beginning with F.

Yes, as in fold. A winning player has to know when to hold them and when to fold them.

Now where have we heard that line before? But Gordon remains busy on more than one front, continuing to be a member of the Full Tilt Poker team and can be found playing there five to ten hours a week as time permits.

How did this affiliation develop?

“The pros I’m involved with at Full Tilt are my best friends in poker. A few years ago we were very disappointed with the quality of the software and user experience. We thought that we could do better. So we consulted on the design of the site and licensed that software to Full Tilt”

All the money he makes playing on-line is donated to charity, cancer research. “I’m not playing for myself, I play for charity.”

Cancer research should continue to do well if Gordon’s guesses about the continued growth ahead for Internet poker and sites such as Full Tilt are correct. He categorically rejects suggestions that business may be leveling off so far as the U.S. market is concerned.

“I think it is still a very untapped market,” his voice rising a bit as though he’s saying how could anyone believe otherwise. “I think people are still discovering the game and how much fun it is. It’s nothing but growing, not only in the U.S. but also overseas, in Europe, I think, the poker market is just now starting to heat up. Southeast Asia is a completely untapped market.”

Certain sites may be leveling off, he concedes, even losing market share, “but that is because they don’t execute sound customer-satisfying marketing plans.

People are leaving those sites because they find others that do a better job of satisfying expectations.” Just one more example of the competitive forces at work in any business sector.

Gordon doubts the Justice Department will give its blessing to Internet gambling any time soon, but notes, “All the sites now out there are overseas and legal entities and in some cases publicly traded companies. The World Trade Organization has already come down in favor of the rights of the on-line sites overseas to exist. They found the United States in violation on several occasions . . .

“I think the United states should regulate it, tax it and accept the fact that it is going to happen and generate some badly needed revenue instead of forcing these companies to locate overseas.”

Testifying before the Minnesota Senate he said “government does not need to protect us from social poker and I am willing to stand by that statement.”

Some several months later a law legalizing social poker in bars and restaurants throughout the state was passed.

Friends and members of his family may have been “a bit skeptical” when Gordon decided he was going to take a fulltime approach to poker”

Thinking about this for a moment, giving it a grin, “But I have to say it has worked out extraordinarily well and I’ve add a big Itold- you-so to people who had doubts about my decision in the early going.”

Filed under: Poker News