World Poker Tour Championship Interview: Phil GalfondFormer High Stakes Online Pro Talks About Post Black Friday |
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As play in the $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship was nearing level 10 on day 2, ex-online poker pro Phil “OMGClayAIken” Galfond was one of the chip leaders with 300,000 in chips. Galfond is working towards the $1.6 million first place prize, a figure reminiscent of a good week in the online high stakes cash games.
While Galfond was likely to play in the WPT’s season-ending event regardless whether or not online poker was still available in the US, the Maryland native had been in the Silver State for more than a week, trying to find some high stakes cash game action and end the “boredom” that ensued after Black Friday.
Galfond was at the Bellagio for a $5,000 event (a rarity for him) earlier this week and also made the trip to Aria after about a month away from high stakes cash games. Galfond, who is one of the world’s best pot-limit Omaha players, sat down and played a mix that included badeucy and badacey — both games he had never played before.
Like Galfond, other former high stakes online grinders will likely need to increase their game repertoire as well. “It’s fun to learn new games,” Galfond said, “but obviously you don’t want to have to learn them at the highest stakes, which is a mistake I’ve made before.” Galfond Tweeted on May 7: It’s my 3rd day of badeucy and badacey. I can now almost always read my own hand. Earlier this year, Galfond had been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars learning deuce-to-seven triple on Full Tilt Poker and had just started crushing the game before online poker was shutdown.
“I have hopes that [deuce-to-seven triple draw] will come back,” said Galfond, who in early April was just starting to pull out of one of his worst career downswings. “Whether it’s me going over seas and playing — I know there are still games running online now — or playing it live somewhere. It’s a great game, and I think it is one that will keep being played because it is conducive to being a popular high stakes game. There is a lot of variance in it, and it’s a lot of fun.”
Galfond gave the odds of him relocating at 95 percent, but he just doesn’t know where and when yet. He said Canada is one option, but that the preliminary research has concluded that it would be difficult to relocate there and reside in the country for an extended period of time.
While the process of moving to another country is a complicated one, Galfond said the biggest problem with relocating is his New York City apartment, which Yahoo! Real Estate reported as being purchased in 2008 for $3.14 million. “That’s the one thing I am most stressed about: What am I going to do with my place.”
Despite confusion about Full Tilt Poker’s situation with cashing out its players, Galfond said he still has faith in the company. “I know a good amount of the Full Tilt guys, but I am by no means an expert on the situation. I did expect things to happen sooner, especially with as fast as PokerStars took to take care of everything. But I am still comfortable with my money on Full Tilt.”
Galfond’s own business, elite poker training site BlueFirePoker, has also received a hit since Black Friday, but according to Galfond the company will be fine. “We have a lot of customers over seas. But the difficult part for us is coming up with ways for our US coaches to make new videos because as of now we can’t play. We’ve talked a lot and we have a lot of new ideas, and for the time being we’ve done hand history reviews and got users to submit videos for review. We are looking into other things as well, trying to figure this all out.”
Despite having more than $1 million tied up online, working to find elusive live high-stakes games that fit his liking, running a successful poker training site, and currently playing in the $25,000 WPT Championship, the poker pro is calm and confident about his poker future.
“I haven’t been super stressed about it, as there are a lot of people that are in worse shape than I am and need the money quicker. But it’s all definitely been frustrating,” said Galfond, who joked about having to sell the slide that connects the two floors of his NYC apartment. “I’m trying to figure out what I am going to do next; it’s very up in the air. I’m going to be fine though.”
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