Partway through the new documentary ‘Galfond’, an old college friend of poker player Phil Galfond shares a story: as young men they’d often meet in cafés and coffee shops, but Phil was never interested in keeping his change from the cashier. Instead he’d take pleasure in hiding it somewhere in the café, a pile of coins stacked neatly on a windowsill, or nestled discreetly behind the sugar. A small piece of treasure, waiting to be found and giving a stranger a smile, a surprise, and a free coffee.
It’s a small detail that illustrates two key points about Phil Galfond the player, content creator, entrepreneur and coach: he genuinely enjoys adding value to other people’s lives and, even in college, he was doing just fine for money.
Big names come together to help tell Galfond’s story
During Galfond’s one year of college he turned a $100 online poker deposit into $100K. Dropping out to focus on poker, he went on to make $2M in the next two years, and a year after that had run it up to $8M.
Friends from those college days include noted high stakes cash game crusher Andrew Robl, who joins a Who’s Who of poker greats in telling Phil Galfond’s story as they’ve seen it. Matt Berkey, Jason Koon, Maria Ho, Landon Tice, Nick Schulman and more appear on-camera to give their take on one of American poker’s success stories.
Not that it’s all wine and roses; an entire installment in this four-part series takes a close look at the rollercoaster ride of Run It Once Poker, the online platform Galfond co-founded in a bid to recapture something he felt went missing when PokerStars was acquired by Amaya in 2014.
Some of the stories behind launching and running the site make playing high stakes poker look like pitching pennies; after spending $300K a month of his own money to keep the site afloat while seeking a buyer, it’s not surprising Galfond is so hard to rattle when simply playing a game.
Behind the scenes of the Galfond Challenge
On the flip side of the coin, another part of the series focuses squarely on Phil’s successes in the Galfond Challenges, in particular the first when he took on the online giant ‘VeniVidi’ in 25,000 hands of heads-up PLO. History tells us he won, but it’s sometimes easy to forget just how big a hole he dug for himself during the first part of the challenge, and how hard he had to scramble to get out of it.
With less than half the challenge completed Galfond was down $1M - a demoralizing 45 buy-ins - and seriously considered quitting. In the end he pulled it back - all the way back - to lock up the win with just a few hundred hands remaining.
We hear from his mindset coach, Elliot Roe, but the true insight comes from Galfond himself as he outlines the realizations he reached during the lowest moments of the challenge. It was not simply a matter of healing a bruised ego, but of making mental adjustments to his opponent, realizing where GTO play was working and where it wasn’t, and digging deep to pull out the win when it looked like all was lost.
A fresh view on a high-stakes world
We hear all this from Phil himself who - alongside his wife, fellow poker player Farah - is open when articulating the realities of life in poker’s upper reaches. Juggling a family with a young child, careers in poker, business, coaching and more, the two Galfonds welcome cameras into their lives - at home, in the casino, the office and more.
It finds them at a point in their lives when Farah is playing more and more live tournaments, while Phil is finding deep satisfaction as a poker coach - following in the footsteps of the many teachers in his family - and playing less poker as a result.
The result is an interesting view into a high stakes world to which few of us have access, but which contains the type of ups and downs we can relate to all the same.
In opening this honest window onto their world, the Galfonds are back in the café playing Phil’s old trick. Nestled on YouTube, tucked in behind the cat videos, is hidden a four-part mini treasure waiting to give you a surprise and a smile. And like Phil’s stack of coins on the windowsill, it’s all free, and all yours. Enjoy.
‘Galfond’ is available for free on YouTube now: watch parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Images courtesy of 'Galfond'
