Aptitude, Desire, Passion and Dedication: Phil Galfond’s Insights Of His Poker Career

How Phil Became Successful In Poker

Phil Galfond ‘s poker story isn’t a grasping one yet he managed to achieve more than $10,000,000 in total winning during his career mostly due to his deep love of the gaming in general:

“As a teenager I played card games with my friends. It was the main thing we did when we hung out.

One of my friends from that group of friends won a tournament online for $30,000 on partypoker. It became the talk of our friend group and he actually reached out directly to me and said: “You know, Phil, I’ve picked up a couple books and I’ve been actually studying this. I think you’d be really good at it”. I love to gamble, love playing games and video games, and I’m very competitive — so that was all it took. I think I need to reach back out to him and get him a nice gift.”

The main difference between an average success story and Phil Galfond ‘s poker journey is that he doesn’t look at hard work as the only way to get ahead of the curb. Instead, he worships diligence, smart choices and opportunities for self-education:

“When I started 20 years ago nobody really knew what they were doing. I mean, that’s an overstatement but games were a lot easier and the only resources out there were books, many of which were not very good. 

So, I found a couple books, then found TwoPlusTwo forum where a lot of strategy discussion was happening and I was winning pretty quickly. I mean at like $10 an hour but within a matter of a few months.

At some point there were some crude tools where you could calculate equities, how things would go if you shoved all-in in a tournament situation, where you had to manually enter what everybody would do.

It was kind of a pain but actually I found that really helpful to go through the manual process and figure out which factors influence things the most.

And then the training site, I would say, was the biggest leap for a lot of people. So, professionals started making videos where they would record their screen and themselves playing and talk about why they were doing, what they were doing. And so, I learned a lot from that.

But honestly, the biggest leaps in my game have come from working with other people — occasionally coaches but mostly just peers studying together. Not only the shared knowledge but the motivation, the emotional support in a very stressful game — I think it’s huge.”

Phil started his career with a $50 deposit that he quickly lost just to make another $100 one. Firstly he played 10-max Sit&Go with $10 buy-in where top-3 finishers were awarded. After a year of gradual growth in this type of tournament, Phil had a $100,000 bankroll. He dropped out of college and at the same time switched to cash games, starting from $5/$10 with $1,000 buy-in.

As a person who was always looking to compete in bigger games and, by his own admission, “liked to gamble a little too much” Phil adopted a simple yet risky bankroll management strategy:

• Build up more and more bankroll
• Move up way too high and take a shot for just a few buy-ins
• Often — lose, step back down and build it up again
• Repeat

This worked for Galfond, since his desire to compete and challenge himself motivated him to grind between his shots. However, he abandoned the strategy after one of his shots turned out to be success:

“I kind of leap frogged two stakes because the shot actually held, stuck. Then by the time — I started playing in 2004 and it was 2008 — I have my biggest year still to date and won $8 million in online games and those were $60,000 buy-in and $100,000 buy-in cash games.

The highest stakes I’ve routinely played now are $500 / $1,000 blinds, which is $100,000 buy-in. I have once played $2,000 / $4,000 blinds, which is $400,000 buy-in, and I’ve once played a $1 million buy-in tournament but those were one-offs.”

The Role of Poker Role Models In Phil’s Career

Even though Galfond doesn’t have a role model in the true meaning of the word, he has had a few coaches and professionals around during the career whom he continues to respect even years later:

“First coach I ever had was Tommy Angelo, who’s kind of a poker Buddha. I came to him to learn cash game poker strategy because I had heard he’s a great coach and this is when I was transitioning from Sit&Go’s to cash games.

He didn’t teach me any cash game strategy — he just taught me mental game and how to be a professional. And I always say that like I didn’t learn any of the things I wanted to learn but I learned everything I needed to learn from Tommy.”

If you don’t know who Tommy Angelo is — he is one of the most successful poker coaches and writers who has written and produced more than 150 magazine articles, 60 poker-training videos and five books on poker theory and strategy. He’s also dipped his toes into YouTube production as a creator and co-host of two projects: PokerSimple and Tommy Angelo.

Still, he wasn’t the only person influenced Phil Galfond in terms of professional poker:

“Later on, another game coach that made a huge difference for me was Elliot Roe.

He’s a mindset and performance coach and hypnotherapist.”

Both Angelo and Roe didn’t teach Galfond so much about strategy as they did in terms of his mental game, psychology and self-awareness.

In respect to his strategic improvement, Phil Galfond has consistently advocated for self- and peer-to-peer education, with the help of training videos and friends he has worked and studied with.

Phil on Evolution And The Future Of Poker

As Galfond notes on the podcast, the changes that poker underwent during his career weren’t always pleasant nor welcome in his opinion:

“When I started playing, it was the beginning of the online poker poker boom. Chris Moneymaker won the [WSOP 2003] Main Event — and then poker just exploded.

The games were plentiful, none of us knew what we were doing. There was a lot, it was like a wild west — we were figuring it out as we went. And I found that really fun as the tools progressed as training resources got better and better and specifically in — I’m struggling to remember now but like the early 2010s, when the first poker solver came out  — that revolutionized the game. We had all been using logic and experience to determine what optimal strategy was but we didn’t really know. And at that point it became provable more or less what optimal strategy was and so it introduced a lot of elements, a lot of strategies that we had never considered and changed the game drastically.

To be honest, when that first happened I was pretty sad about it because I’m more of a figure outer than a studier and it kind of pulled me away from the game a little bit. So I went away to do business. I just had a lot to do on the businesses that I started but also I was kind of worried about my ability to succeed in poker long term after the advent of solvers.

And when I finally came back — first time I had studied solvers when I came back to play The Galfond Challenge in 2020, so long after they’d been invented — what I learned was kind of the same skills that applied before then still apply. And there was new information, solvers were helpful and the requirements for studying went up to compete at the highest levels but your creativity and aptitude still matter a lot.”

Even when Phil found his peace with poker solvers as an educational tool, he didn’t stop worrying about their effect on the future of poker:

“As far as solvers go, the game has been solved, but their improvement from here will happen in two ways, I think.

One in the most important ways is just ease of use, just being more user friendly. Right now a lot of the tools are just… Most people will look at them and say: “No way, I’m not studying that”.

But especially with advancements in AI, I think that we’ll see that solver data turned into actual explanations in English about what kinds of strategies to use and why. And then more will be done with tools with exploitive play, meaning: “I know my opponent’s doing this a little bit wrong — solve exactly how I should counter that” — which you can do now in a very clunky way that doesn’t work out great but I think that’ll get better.

The main fear that I have about poker — which everybody has had for a while — is bots online. I don’t know how many years into the future till we’ve all got AI glasses and we’re all hooked up to the Internet all the time because you can’t beat a solver, you can’t beat a bot. So, that is a big fear of mine as somebody who loves online poker.”

Advice For New Poker Players In 2024

Professional poker is not a game for the lazy, absent-minded person. You can’t just come and conquer in modern poker: success demands much more and Phil Galfond has firsthand knowledge of this:

“If you are planning to get into poker in 2024, you really have to love it. This was even true 15 years ago: people who get into it for the money — they fizzle out.

It’s really tough but it can be such a fun, amazing, beautiful, fascinating game. And if you love games, if you love competing and you have an aptitude for math, logic, psychology — then it could be something really great to get into.

It probably sounds like it’s a hard career and I suggest people get into it very cautiously — I’m careful about suggesting it. Nevertheless I still think there’s a lot of money to be made. But It’s going to take aptitude, desire, passion, and dedication.”

If you want to know more about Phil Galfond, his experience and knowledge — check out his mini-series GALFOND on YouTube:

• “Who Is This Guy?”
• A Bad Day
• Conquered
• The Next Challenge

You can also read PokerListings articles featuring Phil Galfond:

• The Best Poker and Life Advice from Phil Galfond
• Tips From Phil Galfond on How to Raise Your Limits
• Phil Galfond: “I’m Going to Give My Best Shot at a New Poker Site”