Phil Ivey Biography
Phil Ivey is easily considered to be the best poker.com players in history and he has more fans then your average poker player and can often be found in the media spotlight. Phil has always loved anything to do with gambling and winning money and he started gambling at a very young age. Before Ivey was even legal age to gamble in the USA he was playing with a fake ID in Atlantic City casinos as he lived nearby in Jersey which is where he grew up.
Ivey didn’t begin playing on the poker circuit until the year 2000 and he started out with a bang as he won his first WSOP bracelet that year in a PLO event. Ivey won three more WSOP bracelets in 2002 which was an incredible performance for anyone let alone a player as young as Ivey. Phil has also played very well in Bellagio and Commerce events throughout the years.
Ivey was won his fifth WSOP bracelet in 2005 and then he cooled down on the WSOP circuit until recently in 2009 where he has already won two bracelets. Ivey has yet to win a bracelet playing NL Holdem which is why some people believe he isn’t the best Holdem player in the world, but the best poker player in the world. He has proven to be able to win in numerous different poker games without much problem and he is definitely one of the most feared poker players in the world.
Phil is always in the media spotlight and has made a ton of appearances on television shows such as Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, Aussie Millions Cash Game and many others. Ivey is a bluff master and is never scared to gamble his chips away, which is why he is so hard to play against. You will often see him on television bluffing his chips away with nothing but a 9 high or something, and often he will get away with it. Andy Beal who is a poker billionaire played against Ivey in a heads-up challenge and in only 3 days Ivey managed to win $16 million off of the billionaire poker player. Those 3 days alone Ivey made more then most of us will make in our entire life and it goes to show you that tournament play is such a small part of poker.
In all Phil has won 7 WSOP bracelets in his career and as you can see two of them came this year in 2009 so he still could easily pass Hellmuth for the record. Ivey has played on the WPT a lot as well, but hasn’t seen nearly the same success as he has on the WSOP circuit. Phil has won one WPT title in his career and that didn’t come until 2008 when he won the WPT Championships. He has finished on quite a few final tables in the WPT though so he has been close to winning a lot more titles then he actually has.
Ivey has almost earned $11 million in live tournament play and has earned countless more millions on Full Tilt Poker as he is a Full Tilt Team member who actively plays in the online poker room. Phil lives in Las Vegas so he can be near the biggest poker games and he lives with his wife. When he isn’t playing poker Ivey loves anything where he can gamble and often is playing golf with his friends for money.