Paul Phillips may look like Gus Hansen, but then again he looks like a California "Surfer Dude" sometimes, too. His online poker blog has a pic of Paul with long dreadlocks, but when he appeared on the World Poker Tour opposite Hansen, his head was shaved, and his very expensive suit belied any thoughts of surfers. Paul was, and is, a millionaire, and he looked the part. He is a straight shooter, as he describes himself, and one who is very, very comfortable on the Internet. In fact, Phillips was one of those who made millions off the dot-com boom of the nineties.
As a Chief Technical Officer of a Seattle-based internet company called Go2Net, Phillips received its shares as part of his compensation. The company went public and Phillips decided to make a comfortable life for himself by selling his stock and retiring from the business world.
With money not an object, Paul simply wanted to win his WPT event, and tried hard to make the right decisions all of the time. He did not go on to win that time, but making the final table alone was a proof of his ability as a poker player. And in December of 2003 Paul entered the World Poker Tour's Five Diamond tournament and won it, taking home over a million dollars, his largest win to date. Since 2003, he has made it to second place in the World Series of Poker $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo Split event and 4th place in the $1,000 No Limit Holdem tournament. His total earnings in 2003 were an impressive $1,477,037, ranking him 2nd on the 2003 Money List. In 2004, he earned $476,637 and won first place in the World Heads Up Poker Championship in Barcelona, Spain.
Poker is not the only game Paul likes to play, however. His web blog is rife with examples of scrabble games he has played online, something of an obsession with the young millionaire. Also provided by Paul for the consumption of those who care are personal photos, in which many poker fans might be surprised to see Chris "Jesus" Ferguson in street clothes, and Phil Ivey on an airplane.
Paul is one of those poker pros with a fairly low profile, all things considered, but one who is intimately familiar with the life and times of the pro poker circuit.
