Posts Tagged ‘London high stakes poker’

Phil Ivey talks Macau Games, Strategy, $200k Golf Bet

Thursday, February 20th, 2014

Throughout his career, Phil Ivey has remained one of the quieter and more private poker stars. But ever since he began the process of transforming IveyPoker into a full-fledged training site, he’s been a lot more active in the social media world. Ivey also did a rare interview with PokerCast recently, where he discussed a number of very interesting topics.

Not surprisingly, the interview began with some discussion about Ivey’s victory in the Aussie Millions $250k last month. The 38-year-old said that his win was actually “smooth sailing” because he had played with most of the final table in the past. Ivey added that he doesn’t really like rebuying in these types of events, which is good, given that he only needed one $250k buy-in to take down the AU$4 million top prize.

Another topic that Ivey talked about was how there’s not many good poker games for him in Vegas anymore. Instead, Ivey said that he has to go to London or Macau to find games that are worth his time. He specifically addressed the Macau high stakes action by saying that they’ve “gotten a lot tougher” because the businessmen have improved.

The PokerCast crew also asked Ivey about why he opened a training site. To this question, the 9-time WSOP champion said that you don’t have to be “analytical” just to teach poker. Ivey added that he plans on doing videos for every game and every limit, where he talks about his thought process on a lot of hands.

One more interesting subject that Ivey hit upon was a golf prop bet that he made with Joe Cassidy in Aruba. Ivey put $1k against Cassidy’s $200k that he wouldn’t make a fairly long shot. The poker legend said that he “thought he was just giving Cassidy $1,000.” But the ball went in the hole and Ivey couldn’t believe it.

If you’d like to hear more about this story and others from Ivey, make sure to check out his interview.