Phil Gordon Biography
May 18, 2009
Phil Gordon is an excellent poker player, but is more famously known around the poker world for his commentating at many of the major poker events. Phil grew up an average life and went on to graduate from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computer Science. After working some jobs to pay the bills Phil ended up landing the first hired position at Netsys Technologies. The company was later bought out by Cisco Systems and Phil became a millionaire over night which allowed him to quit his job and travel the world to play poker professionally which is something he really wanted to do.
Phil has never won a WSOP bracelet, but he did come really close in the very first WSOP tournament he played in. It was the 2001 WSOP Main Event and Phil managed to finish in fourth place out of a large playing field and took home just under half a million dollars. After this close call to winning a bracelet Phil continued to see success throughout 2002-2005 where he made several more final tables, but was never able to win a bracelet. To date Phil has finished in the money sixteen times in WSOP events without one bracelet so he is definitely long overdue if you ask me.
The WPT has been better to Gordon then the WSOP and he has won a WPT title in 2004 when he won the Bay 101 Shooting Stars Tournament. Phil came close to winning another WPT title, but finished second place in the Ultimate Bet Aruba Event. To date Phil has finished on two final tables and made the money twice in WPT events. Only a couple years ago Gordon also won the Full Tilt Poker Championships where he won roughly $600,000 which was his best cash in his career.
You’ve probably seen Gordon playing poker on television as he has made multiple showings on the PartyPoker.com Poker After Dark show as well as the NBC Heads-Up Championship. Phil hasn’t won a PAD episode yet, but he did finish in the sweet sixteen of the NBC Heads-Up Championship which is pretty good based on the opponents he needed to beat.
Phil Gordon as I mentioned before has probably spent as much time commentating as playing poker. Some of his commentating gigs consist of seven seasons of Celebrity Poker Showdown and multiple seasons of the WSOP Main Event. Gordon has great knowledge of the game of poker which has helped him excel at commentating. Without Phil’s commentating many poker players today wouldn’t be able to learn as much as they have. With poker on television so much now many players learn from these events and if there was no commentating we would be in trouble.
Phil has also written three poker books in his career which have become great selling poker books over the years. Phil’s book specialize in NL Holdem as that is what he mainly played so if you’re a NL Holdem player I suggest reading his books. They are great reads and compared to other books I think the flow of Phil’s books is much better as he has past experience writing with an audience in mind.
