Poker Player - Paul Phillips
Paul Phillips is a rich guy getting richer, in fact it is widely rumoured that Phillips is worth over $90 million. He certainly doesn't need to play poker for the money, as he is one of the few people to emerge from the dot.com boom with a profit. In 1996, fresh out of college, Paul Phillips became the Chief Technical Officer of www.Go2Net.com; a Seattle based Internet Company, which would become his main source of income and the stepladder to his career in professional poker. Phillips received shares in the company as part of his salary but soon began to resent the 'working nine to five' lifestyle. Hence when the company Go2Net went public, Phillips decided to make a comfortable life for himself by selling his stock and making himself a small fortune in the process. He cashed out for millions and retired from the business world. His huge payout during the Internet stock boom has earned him the nickname of 'dot com'. It was a smart move for Phillips as not long after this the dot.com market crashed, giving Phillips a bit of a reputation as a business genius.
Born August 9th 1972 in San Francisco, Paul Phillips grew up in Northern California with his brother and two sisters. He went to college at U.C. San Diego and majored in computer science. It was while he was at college that Phillips wrote the Boa web server although he no longer maintains it. It was also during his time at college that Phillips began playing poker. In 1994 one of his colleagues at college discovered that Phillips had an interest in Blackjack and so he introduced him to poker. Thanks to the profit he made from his Internet shares in the dot.com boom, Phillips was able to pursue a career in professional poker and has been playing in big poker tournaments since the late 1990's. The rest, as they say, is history.
Five years after leaving college (at the age of 29) Paul took the 2001 Commerce Casino's LA Poker Classic $5,000 No Limit Championship netting himself a cool $95,950. His biggest win to date came in December 203 at the Bellagio where he took home a payment of over $1 million for his win at the Five Diamond Bellagio Tournament. Since 2003, he has made it to second place in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) $1,500 Omaha High Low Split and fourth place in the $1,000 No Limit Hold'em tournament. His total take in 2003 was an impressive $1,477,037 (despite his choosing not to play in the World Series of Poker that year) ranking him second on the 2003 money list. In 2004 he made three final tables and earned approximately $476,637 and won first place in the World Series of Poker Championship in Barcelona, Spain. He is currently ranked fourth on the World Poker Tour's all time money list. As of 2005 his total live tournament winnings exceed $2,200,000.
There is no doubting that Paul is a talented, intelligent and often controversial player. His vast poker knowledge and ability to read his opponents, makes him a very dangerous player in the various games he plays. He is also known for having strong opinions (especially low ones about Phil Hellmuth Jnr). If he doesn't like something he will say so, and if you don't agree with him then that's your problem, deal with it. On his website, in his own words, Paul describes himself as a straight shooter, one who will say what he thinks and make no apologies for it, however his outspoken nature has landed him in trouble on more than one occasion. In 2001 he made some lightly critical comments about Bunions Horseshoe, home of the WSOP, mostly about the way in which the Horseshoe split money between players and casino employers. The comments led to him being barred from the casino when his observations appeared in the paper. They eventually allowed him to return but Paul has said that the extremely hostile treatment he faced afterward made it an easy decision to stay away. Hence despite being reinstated as a competitor in late 2001, he only played one event in 2002, coming second in the $1,500 Triple Draw Lowball Ace to Five event. The controversy doesn't stop there. In 2003 he came second in a World Poker Tour event in which he had made a deal with his opponent (Mel Judah), which was subsequently covered by Sports Illustrated in an unfavourable light. As a result of this the World Poker Tour made the decision to ban players from making deals in their tournaments.
Paul Phillips currently splits his time between his home in Los Angeles and his Condo in Las Vegas. In 2005 he and his wife Kathleen had their first child, a daughter named Ivy. In order to spend time with his new daughter, Phillips did not play as many tournaments. It is doubtful that his daughter will follow his footsteps into professional poker; he has been known to have said that "any child of mine that eyed poker as a career would swiftly be locked in the closet until they repented".
Paul Phillips is known as a very talkative player. With his keen ability to read other players and his 'all or nothing' attitude, he will undoubtedly be a regular on the pro poker circuit for years to come.
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