Phil Galfond (born January 16, 1985) is an American professional

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

player. Galfond won three

World Series of Poker bracelets The World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet is considered the most coveted non-monetary prize a poker player can win. Since 1976, a bracelet has been awarded to the winner of every event at the annual WSOP. Even if the victory occurred before 197 ...

, in the $5,000 buy-in pot-limit

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest city ...

with rebuys event in

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

, the $10,000 no-limit 2-7 single draw championship in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...

and the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship in

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

. Due to his success as a high-stakes online player, he appeared on multiple seasons of GSN's ''

High Stakes Poker ''High Stakes Poker'' is an American cash game poker television program. The poker variant played on the show is no limit Texas hold 'em. The first four seasons ran from January 16, 2006 to December 17, 2007 on GSN. The next three seasons ran fr ...

''. He is currently the owner of real money poker site ''Run It Once Poker'' and poker training site ''Run It Once Training'' where he also is a coach.

Personal life

Galfond is originally from

North Potomac, Maryland North Potomac is a census-designated place and unincorporated area in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is located less than north of the Potomac River, and is about from Washington, D.C. It has a population of 23,790 as of 2020. ...

and attended

Thomas Sprigg Wootton High School Thomas S. Wootton High School or Wootton High School (WHS) is a public high school in Rockville, Maryland. Its namesake is Thomas S. Wootton, the founder of Montgomery County. The school was founded in 1970 and is part of the Montgomery County P ...

and the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

. He used to reside in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

where he installed a slide as his access between the two penthouse apartments he purchased in 2011. He married actress

Farah Fath Farah LeeAllen Fath Galfond (born May 1, 1984) is an American actress. She portrayed Mimi Lockhart on the NBC soap opera ''Days of Our Lives'' from 1999 to 2007, and Gigi Morasco on the ABC Daytime soap opera ''One Life to Live'' from 2007 to ...

on May 15, 2015. Their son, Spencer, was born in December 2018.

Poker

Live poker

Tournaments

As of February 2020, Galfond's total live tournament winnings exceed $2,900,000. His 24 cashes at the WSOP account for $2,876,895 of those winnings.

=World Series of Poker

= Galfond won the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha with rebuys event at the 2008 World Series of Poker, earning $817,781. He defeated Adam Hourani during heads-up play. The final table featured a number of well-known professional players including

Phil Hellmuth Phillip Jerome Hellmuth Jr. (born July 16, 1964) is an American professional poker player who has won a record sixteen World Series of Poker bracelets. He is the winner of the Main Event of the 1989 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the Main Even ...

Daniel Negreanu Daniel Negreanu (; born July 26, 1974) is a Canadian professional poker player who has won six World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets and two World Poker Tour (WPT) championship titles. In 2014, independent poker ranking service Global Poker Ind ...

John Juanda Johnson "John" Juanda (born July 8, 1971) is an Indonesian professional poker player of Chinese descent based in Tokyo, Japan. He has won five World Series of Poker bracelets. Personal life Juanda was born into a Hoklo family in Medan, Nort ...

, Kirill Gerasimov,

Johnny Chan Johnny Chan (;He has another Chinese name "Chen Qiangni" () which is also commonly used by Chinese-language media. It is a transliteration of "Johnny Chan" (as "Chen" for "Chan", "Qiangni" for "Johnny") rather than his Chinese birth name. born ...

David Benyamine David Benyamine (born July 5, 1972 in Paris, France) is a French professional poker player with a World Poker Tour title. Benyamine was a professional tennis player in his early career but had to retire because of shoulder pain. He was also a su ...

Brian Rast Brian Rast (born November 8, 1981) is a professional poker player living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Early personal life Rast was born in Denver, Colorado but raised in Poway, California, where he graduated as valedictorian from Poway High School in ...

as well as online star Adam 'houdini' Hourani. Galfond went on to win a second WSOP gold bracelet in 2015, topping a field of 77 entries in the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Championship to win $224,383. He then earned his third gold bracelet in 2018, winning the $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship for $567,788.

=World Poker Tour

= Galfond has two World Poker Tour in-the-money finishes. He finished in 70th place in the $25,000 buy-in

World Poker Tour The World Poker Tour (WPT) is an internationally televised gaming and entertainment brand. Since 2002, the World Poker Tour has operated a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting playdown and the fi ...

World Championship in April 2008, earning $39,570. In December 2012, he finished 24th in the $10,000 buy-in WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $31,714.

=Other notable tournaments

= Galfond finished in 18th place at the 2006

World Series of Poker Circuit event The World Series of Poker Circuit is a series of poker tournaments held annually at a variety of casinos since 2005 as a build-up to the World Series of Poker (WSOP). All Championship events are competed in no limit Texas hold 'em; preliminary ev ...

in Grand Casino Tunica, earning $22,895.

Online poker

Galfond is well known for

online poker Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a huge increase in the number of poker players worldwide. Christiansen Capital Advisors stated online poker revenues grew from $82.7 million in 2001 t ...

where he plays high-stakes

cash games Cash games, also sometimes referred to as ring games or live action games, are poker games played with "real" chips and money at stake, often with no predetermined end time, with players able to enter and leave as they see fit. In contrast, a po ...

primarily $200/$400 stakes and above in no-limit

Texas hold 'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five Community card poker, communit ...

and

pot limit Omaha Omaha hold 'em (also known as Omaha holdem or simply Omaha) is a community card poker game similar to Texas hold 'em, where each player is dealt four cards and must make their best hand using exactly two of them, plus exactly three of the five ...

tables on

Full Tilt Poker Full Tilt Poker is an Irish online poker card room and online casino that opened in June 2004. Formerly privately owned by Tiltware, LLC and later by the Rational Entertainment Group, the site was acquired by The Stars Group (then known as Amaya ...

under his nickname "OMG ClayAiken," and on Pokerstars under the screen name "MrSweets28." With a lifetime net profit of over $8M in Internet poker play, he has been one of the most successful online poker players in history (as of May 2011). According to Galfond, he chose “OMGClayAiken” as the antithesis of the “macho” screen names that are prevalent in online poker in hopes that other players would be embarrassed to lose to him. Due to the legal actions against

, which are known as Black Friday, that took place on April 15, 2011, in the United States, Galfond moved to

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, British Columbia, Canada so he could continue to play poker online. In February 2013, Galfond's all-time online earnings on Full Tilt Poker came to over $10,000,000.

Galfond Challenge

In November 2019, Galfond issued a challenge to the poker world to play high-stakes heads-up pot-limit Omaha (PLO), deemed the Galfond Challenge. He issued the challenge in two parts: one challenge was open to PLO coaches and the other was to everyone else in the poker world. Several opponents stepped up and details were ironed out for a series of high-stakes poker matches that would be played on Galfond's online poker site, Run It Once Poker. The first six challengers were Bill Perkins, Brandon Adams, Chance Kornuth, Dan 'Jungleman' Cates, and online poker players 'ActionFreak' and 'VeniVidi1993.' In addition to the money won or lost on the poker table, Galfond and his challengers had large side bets that they were competing for. After being down €900,000+ to poker professional VeniVidi1993, Galfond came back to win his first challenge by securing a €1,472 overall win and the side bet of €100,000. In his match against Actionfreak, Phil Galfond ended the 15.000 hand battle with a €114,000 overall win. This win netted him the sidebet of €150,000.

Business venture

In 2012, Galfond started the poker training site ''Run It Once Training'' with fellow high-stakes players,

Ben Sulsky Benjamin Sulsky (born November 22, 1987) is an American professional poker player from Durham, New Hampshire, currently considered one of the best online cash game players in the world. Sulsky plays under the aliases Sauce123 on PokerStars and S ...

, Di Dang and Hac Dang as coaches. As of September 2019, 125 coaches have produced content for his training site. Being concerned about the direction online poker was heading Galfond announced the launch of poker site ''Run It Once Poker'' in August 2016. The site was launched in public beta in February 2019. In October 2020 Run it Once was one of several entities named in a $330 million defamation lawsuit brought by poker professional Mike Postle. In March 2022 Rush Street Interactive announced it had acquired Galfond's Run It Once poker brand and technology, in a deal which includes Phil Galfond and his development team.

References

External links

*
Run It Once - PokerRun It Once - Training
{{DEFAULTSORT:Galfond, Phil 1985 births American poker players Living people World Series of Poker bracelet winners