Phil Gordon: Professional Poker Player Profile

In poker or in life, Phil Gordon plays big. Gordon has won nearly $1.1 million in poker tournaments since 2001. On that year, he finished fourth in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) championship event where he won $400,000. He also landed a spot on the Travel Channel documentary ("Inside the World Series of Poker").

The following year, Phil Gordon made two final tables, finishing sixth in Pot-Limit Hold'em, and third in Omaha 8/Better. He also won the Pro Division of the World Poker Tour (WPT) inaugural tournament in Aruba. Then he lost to the winner of the amateur division, Juha Helppi.

In 2003, sports journalism became especially attractive to Gordon. He provided expert analysis for the WSOP Championship Event for Binion's live Internet broadcast, as well as daily reports for a national radio audience. And in March 2004, he knocked out two players at once to conquer the WPT's "Bay 101 Shooting Stars" tournament. One of two said players was Chris Moneymaker, whose Cinderella run in the 2003 WSOP has made him an overnight poker sensation.

At the age of 15, Gordon reached the finals of the National Merit Scholarship. Phil graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in Computer Science before the age of 20. Gordon began his working career in 1989, immediately after graduation, when Lockheed Missiles and Space recruited him fresh off campus.

Barely two years later, entrepreneur Herb Madan drew Gordon in to become software architect of his startup company, Netsys Technologies at Palo Alto in California. Thanks to the boom in LAN and WAN market, the company was eventually purchased lock, stock and barrel by Cisco Systems for $95 million, making Phil Gordon a rich man overnight.

Gordon retired early and began his trek across six continents and fifty countries. He has swum with the Great White Sharks off the island of Zanzibar, climbed the almost half-a-kilometer high Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, covered 20,000 kilometers in a Land Cruiser in Australia... to make things brief, he has lived the king-sized life that many have only dreamed about.

Five years later, Phil Gordon settled in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. At the time, poker was an up and rising sport, and the media glitz caught Gordon's fancy. He brushed up on the basics and plunged right in, his nonchalant play style immediately making him a memorable and formidable player.

Gordon is also a member of the infamous group of energetic young poker players called the "TiltBoys." Some of the TiltBoys' escapades are featured in their homepage (http://www.tiltboys.com). Gordon and a few of the other TiltBoys coordinated on the design and software that was eventually used by the website FullTiltPoker.com

Phil Gordon has written three books on poker. A tip booklet he wrote for Celebrity Poker Showdown is now sold as a fundraiser for the Cancer Research and Prevention Organization, a charity he has supported since his Ultimate Sports Adventure fundraising tour in 2003-04.