Poker Professional

Phil Gordon - "TiltBoy"

Poker professional, adventure traveler, sports fan fanatic, television and radio host and commentator, author of three books and DVD instructional guide, internet columnist, philanthropist, and accomplished business man are all packed into the one and only Phil Gordon.

When he was seven, he would spend almost the whole summer at his aunt Lib who taught him poker every night at the kitchen table playing penny-ante Five-Card Draw. By the time Gordon was 15 he had "dropped out" of high school so that he could attend Georgia Institute of Technology on a National Merit Scholarship. He graduated at the age of 20 with a degree in computer science. After working for two years with Lockheed Gordon joined Netsys Technologies, Inc. being their first employee and lead software engineer. When Cisco systems purchased Netsys three years later, they paid $95 million in stock and cash making it possible for Gordon to take an early retirement and set out on an adventure many can not even dream of.

Over the next five years, Phil Gordon would travel six continents and over 50 countries solo. The man embarked on so many escapades ranging from diving with the Great White Sharks, tracking gorillas in Uganda, snowboarding down the highest sand dunes, and exploring the immaculate wilderness of the Galapagos Islands, and many, many more thrills and quests.

In 2000, Gordon began his conquest in the poker world. His first most notable display of his skill was at the 2001 World Series of Poker when he finished fourth at the championship event winning $400,000 and a spot on the Travel Channel documentary ("Inside the World Series of Poker"). 2002 saw him in two final tables, at the Pot-Limit Hold'em where he made sixth and in the Omaha Eight-or-Better event he secured third. Then he was invited to the World Poker Tour by UltimateBet.com's online poker rooms in Aruba, where he locked down first place beating out the world's top seven players. In March 2004, Phil won the World Poker Tour's Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament with an impressive finish by being the first to knock out two players at once.

In 2003 through 2004, fellow Tiltboy, Rafe Furst, and Phil Gordon initiated the Ultimate Sports Adventure tour where they bought a tricked out RV to cover 40,000 miles in order to attend 138 major sports events and visit 25 top golf courses all the while raising $100,000 for the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation. His aunt Lib died from liver cancer and this sparked his proud board membership of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation.

Gordon is also the former Host of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown, a Roshambo expert and in 2003, Phil led expert analysis for the World Series of Poker championship event for Binion's Horseshoe live internet broadcast along with daily reports for a national radio audience on Sporting News Radio's Murray in the Morning show. Gordon is also nicknamed "Tiltboy" due to his affiliation with the notorious group called the "TiltBoys" from California who started a weekly poker game that still exists after 17 years. He is also the author of three books on poker, including Poker: The Real Deal and Phil's Poker Box Set: Phil Gordon's Little Black Book, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book, and Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book and released a DVD, Final Table Poker. He has written for poker magazines as well as a regular column and host of the radio show, The Poker Edge, for ESPN.com. He was a commentator for ESPN's live pay per view broadcast of the 2006 World Series of Poker final table of the main event.

Phil Gordon's earnings of live tournaments are around $1,600,000.