The poker pro conducts an interview with the Daily Star’s Aaron Flanagan
If there is a truly successful online professional poker player nowadays, it must be Phil Galfond. He is considered by many as the greatest online poker player there is, and he spoke about that and the secrets of his success during his popular Galfond Challenge in a recent exclusive interview with Aaron Flanagan of the Daily Star.
"MrSweets28" has been his most popular tag when playing online poker. Besides being really good at playing poker, there is another thing that has brought him this much success: he was never scared of losing it all. "I remember when I was 20, 21 and I was playing for huge amounts of money," he said. "All my friends were broke. I wasn’t that scared to lose it all because if I did, I would just be like all my friends. That is a big advantage when you are playing with no fear."
Galfond added that when playing with large amounts of money, he was not really thinking about the things he could buy with the money out in the real world. "Having everything that I wanted in college consisted of just ordering food every night if I wanted to for 20 bucks. That was the lavish life that it provided me!" Adding that "It is a big disadvantage when you are older, and you understand the value of money."
As he got older, Galfond said that he began to appreciate even more how decisions can impact his financial security. "When you experience a downswing, you realize that it actually massively impacts our financial security right now. I have more of an appreciation for it now. It sounds like it is a good thing, you should appreciate what you are playing for... but in reality, it is better that you don’t. You can play better if you don’t."
During his 20s, Galfond was already seeing millions of dollars in earnings from his online poker activity, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t good at playing live poker events. This 35-year old poker pro has defeated the absolute best in the poker scene, both online and face to face in live events.
