Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey (born February 1, 1976 in Riverside, California) is an American professional poker player.Ivey was born in Riverside, California and moved with his family across the country to Roselle, New Jersey as a three-month old. He crafted his game playing skills amongst his co-workers at a New Brunswick, New Jersey telemarketing firm in the late 1990s. One of his nicknames, “No Home Jerome”, stems from the ID card he secured to practice in Atlantic City in his teenage years.

Despite now focusing more on cash games than tournaments, his tournament accomplishments include winning three bracelets at the 2002 World Series of Poker, tying Phil Hellmuth Jr and Ted Forrest for the most wins in a single year.

Ivey also has bracelets in Pot Limit Omaha from 2000 and 2005. In 2000, he was the first player to beat Amarillo Slim heads-up. In addition to his five World Series Bracelets, Ivey has shown great success in the WSOP Main Event. He placed in the top 25 three times from 2002 to 2005, with the fields growing exponentially each year. Ivey finished 23rd in 2002, 10th in 2003, and 20th in 2005.

Ivey has also reached numerous final tables on the World Poker Tour, but has yet to win an event. Coincidentally, he has lost several of these WPT events by being eliminated while holding the same starting hand each time, an ace-queen. Phil has made seven WPT final tables, his best finish being 2nd at the World Poker Open, in Season One of the World Poker Tour. He has won nearly 1.3 million dollars from those final table appearances.

Ivey made his debut on the European Poker Tour in Barcelona, September 2006. He came to the final table of nine as the chipleader, but he eventually came in second to Bjørn-Erik Glenne from Norway.

In 2006, Ivey was enticed to London to participate in The London All Star Challenge of the inaugural European Poker Masters. Not only Europe’s first ever independent poker tour, the EPM boasted the best line-up of players ever seen in Europe. As one of the favorites, Ivey made it to the final table to finish 7th, and collected just shy of $15,000.

On 20 November 2005, Ivey won the $1,000,000 first prize at the Monte Carlo Millions tournament. Just one day after winning $1 Million, Ivey took home another $600,000 for finishing first at “The FullTiltPoker.Net Invitational Live from Monte Carlo”. The other six men consisted of (in reverse finishing order) Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Chris Ferguson, Dave Ulliott, and John Juanda.

As of 2007, his total live tournament winnings exceed $8,000,000.