Phil ‘OMGClayAiken’ Galfond
Phil Galfond is well known for being one of the best high stakes poker players in the world. He has won millions mainly playing online cash games, and most recently launched his own poker training site – Bluefire Poker, which is considered by many to be the best poker training site on the market. In this article you will learn how Galfond blasted through the low stake games to become the poker superstar he now is.
Galfond was born in Maryland, in 1985. He excelled in his academic studies through high school and after graduating he was accepted at University where he studied as a philosophy major. However Galfond was distracted by poker and instead of studying he wanted to be playing poker, and soon after beginning University he dropped out to play poker full-time. This was a massive risk for Galfond and with limited funds he was forced to grind out victories in sit and go tournaments. He began at PartyPoker, where the games were notorious for having easy opponents. Within a year he had moved from $10 buy-in STT’s to $100 buy-ins and occasionally he would take shots at the $1000 STT’s.
After building a comfortable bankroll he became bored of sit and go tournaments and decided to switch his game and focus on cash games. He began by playing $5/$10 NLHE games even though he didn’t have a sufficient bankroll and should have been playing lower. Despite this he was a regular winner and moved up to the $10/$20 NLHE games, and after winning a few sessions decided to take shots at the $25/$50 and $50/$100 NLHE games. This time he wouldn’t be so fortunate and found himself back at the $5/$10 games trying to build his bankroll again. This would be the last time he would have to jump down in stakes however, and soon he was back playing the higher stake games.
He quickly became one of the most feared online No-Limit Hold’em players and many people avoided playing against him and switched to playing Pot-Limit Omaha. With the action drying up at the Hold’em games Galfond decided to focus on PLO. In just a matter of months he had developed into one of the best PLO players at the $200/$400 stakes playing against friend Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius and the rest of the high stake regulars. After having so much success online he was invited to play in Season 4 of GSN’s ‘High Stakes Poker’. However Galfond was unable to show off his poker skills and was replaced by ‘a more entertaining TV pro’. Understandably Galfond was angry about getting dropped like this, but he did manage to win $20,000 in the short time he played.
Despite mainly being a cash game player, Galfond plays some tournaments when it is WSOP time. The first WSOP tournament he played was in 2006 when he cashed twice, and again in 2007 he cashed twice. The third year would prove most successful, winning his first WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event for $817,781, cementing his place as one of the best PLO players.
Galfond continued crushing the online games at Full Tilt Poker throughout 2008 and as poker training sites burst onto the scene, Galfond found himself being offered contracts to create coaching videos for the sites. He refused however and instead opted to launch his own poker training site – Bluefire Poker. Bluefire Poker was launched in early 2009 and has quickly gained a reputation as one of the best poker training sites available, mainly due to the high quality of the videos available with Galfond reviewing each one before it is uploaded to the site.
Read our Bluefire Poker review to find out how Galfond’s poker training site can turn you into a winning cash-game player or sign-up at Full Tilt Poker to watch him play at the highest stakes available online.
