Phil Ivey: The Powerful Pokey Play Is Real…The ID Is Fake

Poker is particularly exciting because it has a cross-generational aspect unlike nearly all other sports.  Each era in time tends to produce only a handful of truly elite players, with one (sometimes two) who redefine and revolutionize the sport.  Poker provides the rare opportunity for the elite of various eras to actually battle it out.  Phil Ivey is definitely sitting in the elite car of his generation and he appears poised to take the wheel and drive directly into the revolution.

Fittingly, Phil learned poker from his grandfather by playing penny-ante five-card stud when at the age of 8.  Many parents and grandparents play such games with kids as a fun way to spend time together.  On rare occasions this fun pastime plants a bug that leads to a career much later in life. 

With Phil, the bug was fully developed when it bit him and he was confidently pursuing professional poker while most kids his age worried about acne and braces.

While being underage can severely limit your ability to find action, Phil stepped directly around that problem as with a fake ID.  Serving as the master key to his higher education in poker, Phil would take the ID to Atlantic nearby Atlantic City and get into the poker rooms.  All education has a tuition cost and Phil definitely spent his share of money in those rooms.

Unlike most players at a casino table, however, Phil wasn’t really “losing” money; instead, the money was an investment in the future of poker and the returns would be staggering.

Thanks to his counterfeit key, Phil had an incredible amount of real world play under his belt when he finally got the real deal at the magical age of 21.  With this final requirement finally in his possession, Phil was ready to enter the professional chapter of his legend-in-making life.

Phil was 23 when he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet.  To win the Pot-Limit Omaha game, Phil had to beat Phil Hellmuth and Amarillo Slim.  Two world champions, from two different eras in the poker world, against a kid who could only legally buy beer for two years.  With that win, Phil’s name suddenly began popping up all over poker.

In case anyone wasn’t paying close enough attention and thought Phil just got lucky, Phil etched that frequently-spoken into the annals of poker history in the 2002 WSOP by winning a record-setting 3 different bracelets.  Not a bad accomplishment while still in the middle of your twenties.

In addition to his WSOP appearances, Phil has won a variety of other tournaments and frequently finishes in the money.  His success in the tournament world is minor compared to his success cash-games, where Phil devotes the majority of his focus.  Moving between cash and tournament worlds, playing and winning at a variety of games, Phil has developed a well-rounded style and a uniquely stocked weapons case.

Phil has managed to combine the energy and enthusiasm of  youth with the studied discipline and patient intelligence of experience..  The final result is a player who is disarmingly friendly, endlessly observant and fatally skillful.  More than a few of the top names in the game today consider Ivey the best player of his generation and, potentially, in history.

While the glowing compliments certainly don’t hurt his feelings, Phil has a much more modest evaluation of his skills and his need to improve.  His own critical examination of his playing ability pushes him to push, study and improve…an image that probably sends extreme chills through the spines of opponents who tremble at his current level of play.

Phil, the guy, probably wouldn’t “instill fear in you” if you met him in a dark, underground parking garage.  Slide him behind a poker table, however, and the average level of bravery and confidence among the rest of table dips down the scale. 

His reputation generally travels in front of Phil, establishing a healthy chill in a lot of his opponents.  After you’re in a game with him, the feeling begins to grow deeper and stronger.  One of the many reasons for this is that Phil studies everything intently.  There is a difference between looked at, being watched and being studied: most people are never truly studied by someone else.  The effect can be downright eerie to the subject.

Especially when the studier is planning to take your chips and is more than capable of doing so.

In addition to the insightfully intense gaze, Phil plays his hands aggressively.  Okay, “aggressive” is not nearly a strong enough word to describe the speed, frequency and ferocity of his play.  The normally aggressive players at a table can instantly feel like they’re way too tight and the conservative players enter a state of poker paralysis.

This style of supernatural aggression gives him to control the tone and feeling of the game, an incredibly important factor that many players can’t explain let alone influence.  In the same way that a full understanding of gravity isn’t necessary to fall from a building, a full understanding of the effect Phil’s pacing has on the game isn’t necessary to have it steal your chips and crush your expectations. 

Sitting down at a final table in the World Series of Poker with two legendary world champions for the average poker player would be an amazing experience.  Winding up sitting at the table, with a brand new WSOP bracelet would be a dream come true.  When Phil Ivey entered the world’s poker stage by doing both it was a simply a pretty good start.

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