Phil Ivey Knows What Makes a Good Poker Face
Sure, the NFL is in full swing, the NBA just reached a particularly chaotic crescendo, and even the MLB hot stove is front-page news (welcome to Los Angeles, Shohei Ohtani!)—but have you checked the rest of the sports calendar lately? I'm not talking about the World Darts Championship, which just kicked off in London, though I'm sure that'll be plenty of fun.
We're talking about World Poker Tour World Championship, which kicked off this week in—where else?—Las Vegas. This year, the buy-in is a cool $10,400, which goes toward a guaranteed $40-million prize pool. Among the 1,062 entrants is one of the game's biggest stars: Phil Ivey. At just 46 years old, the man is widely considered one of the greatest poker players of all time—if not the greatest. He's won 10 World Series of Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour titles, and claimed over $40 million in recorded winnings. That's not a typo: $40 million. And right now, he's gunning for the event's final table, which will convene next Thursday.
Of course, it takes all manner of strategy, mathematic skill, and superhuman facial-expression abilities to even earn a fraction of Ivey's winnings—so we caught up with Ivey in advance of the event. Here, he opens up about the World Poker Tour, sobriety, and golfing with Michael Jordan.
When it comes to poker faces, tells, bluffs, whatever—Ivey has one golden rule.
Everybody's different, right? So it's not like, Oh, this [person] is doing this this and that. People do different things at different times in different situations. Everybody's individualized. You know, it's really important in poker to break everybody down as individual and not like just make generalizations. Generalizations can get you broke. You got this one wrong, then guess what? You lost all your money.
Ivey's origin story? Back in the day, he was a New Jersey telemarketer. (Just like the HBO docuseries.)
I worked at McDonald's and then I saw some flyer for telemarketing. And McDonald's was paying $5 an hour. This place was playing $8 an hour. So it was a pretty easy decision back then. I didn't know exactly what the percentage breakdowns were, but I think the telemarketing company made like 90 percent [of every sale]—and the police get 10 percent, or some insane break.
Ivey has been sober for four years—and his life is better for it.
I was just like, That's enough. I had a blast, but you know, I just had to make some serious life-betterment decisions—and that was one that was one that I needed to cut. It's hard, though. It's not an easy thing. But for me, it's definitely worth it. My life is much better without it, that's for sure. I take care of things. If I do go out, I wake up the next day and I feel fresh, you know? Much more alert. Healthier. [It was] damaging, you know—I never was a one-drink guy.
What does a man learn about humanity when his job hinges on his ability to study other people? Stop judging everyone.
I've learned to filter through my thoughts [and understand] what I may be thinking may not be correct. My quick assessments, my quick judgments, my clicker, whatever—this may not be [totally accurate]. You look at things more with an open mind. If you make a judgment or whatever—which is natural—or whatever, you accept the fact that you may be wrong, it kind of takes away away from them. It's very important to accept that fact because I have been really wrong in some occasions where I'm like, OK, if I'm wrong about that, what else have I been wrong about?
Ivey has squared off against Michael Jordan on the golf course—but he won't give any details.
We used to play a long time ago. He's just super competitive. Nice. Gentleman. Gambler. That's all. He's super competitive. But I never really feel comfortable talking about my experience with somebody on the golf course—especially somebody like him. People always have some sort of story about him. And you know, he really wasn't about that with me.
Yes, he's hyped for the WPT World Championship—and he says you should be, too.
This is going to be a massive tournament. I get to play with a lot of professional players, a lot of fans, a lot of recreational players. That's the thing about makes poker so amazing: all these people have shot. Some people have a better chance than others, but everybody has a shot. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. These are exciting times for poker—poker is doing well. This $1 million buy-in tournament coming up is obviously going to be huge. It's definitely got my attention. How could it not?
It's pretty damn difficult to have fun in poker, when you're winning and losing massive amounts of cash by the minute. But Ivey tries to maintain some perspective.
I look at it like: I'm gonna enjoy my time at the table. Of course, I still have a desire to win. But winning isn't the end all. There was a time where winning was basically everything to me. It was my sole focus—and all my energy and everything went into poker. It's good to have an acceptance of the fact that you're just not going to win every tournament you play. When you sit down at a table, you need to have an acceptance of that—but still have that competitive edge to where, you know, I guess it still hurts a little.
When you're playing as much poker as I did, other things in your life have to suffer. If you're playing 16 hours a day for 12 years, then my relationship with my wife is going to be forced. How do you think my relationship with my friends would be? Everything in your life is going to suffer because you want to become great at one thing—but you don't look at it that way because that's all you know. I can only look back at that now and say, Those things suffered because this is what I put all my attention energy into. When you know that now, you're like, OK, well, if I go out to full-speed ahead, I'm gonna have to give up something. Is it worth it? Or not? Now, I can make more conscious decisions than I could back then, because I'm more aware of that.
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