Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey was born on 1st February, 1976 in Riverside, California, and moved with his family to Roselle, New Jersey at three months of age. Growing up a stone’s throw from Atlantic City probably didn’t hurt his dream of becoming a professional gambler, which he boldly began proclaiming at an early age.

Phil has warm memories of his grandfather teaching him how to play 5-card Stud, underhandedly dealing from the bottom of the deck. The trick didn’t work, and Phil was hooked.

After a few years spent honing his immense, yet natural, talent at home games hosted by a friend of his fathers, Phil obtained a fake ID using the name Jerome Graham. He quickly became a regular fixture at the Tropicana Casino poker tables in Atlantic City, seeming to never leave for home, earning him the nickname “No Home Jerome.”

He eventually moved to Atlantic City at the age of 20, and came clean to the shift manager about his alias at 21, which was greeted with a few warm chuckles. “No Home Jerome” had finally left the casino, and Phil Ivey arrived in full force.

Phil went on to win his first World Series of Poker event in 2000 at the ripe old age of 23, and immediately became a fearsome player in Las Vegas high-stakes cash games. He moved to Long Beach, California in 2002, and went on to win three World Series of Poker bracelets that same year.

Ivey is tied with four other players (Phil Hellmuth Jr., Puggy Pearson, Ted Forrest, and Jeff Lisandro) for the most tournament wins in a single year, and has been a top 25 contender between 2002 and 2009. He currently holds eight WSOP bracelets, obtained within an astonishingly short 10 years and, at age 33, is the youngest player to have done so.

Ivey also won the 2008 World Poker Tour after a stretch of seven WPT final tables without a victory, putting $1,596,100 in his pocket. He has yet to claim victory in a European Poker Tour, having reached as high as second place, only to lose to Bjørn-Erik Glenne in 2006.

While tournament play has proven to be both a success and an ongoing challenge, Ivey truly excels in live cash games, most notably winning in excess of $16,000,000 against Texas billionaire Andy Beal in 2006. He also wins a significant amount of money playing at Full Tilt Poker, having earned approximately $18,000,000 from 2007 through 2010.

Ivey is also a noted philanthropist, gifting $50,000 to the Empowered 2 Excel charity in Las Vegas in 2008. He also formed the Budding Ivey Foundation, named after his grandfather Leonard “Bud” Simmons, which raises money for various charities, including programmes to aid in childhood literacy and to provide food for the homeless.