Phil Galfond

4/7/2022by admin

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The Galfond Challenge is an ongoing series where high stakes PLO legend Phil Galfond engages in a series of heads up battles. Chip Leader Coaching founder Chance Kornuth is Galfonds third challenger and only poker training site instructor to accept the challenge.

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) April 12, 2020 Not to be ungracious, VeniVidi was quick to express his thoughts about the challenge too, and credited his opponent as being a “Terminator” in. Taking place in Pot Limit Omaha rather than NLHE, the Chance Kornuth Galfond Challenge saw Phil Galfond get off to a strong start before his latest challenger took the lead after a terrific run. Posted on May 15, 2012 May 15, 2012. Let’s say, totally hypothetically, that you’re a high stakes online player – we’ll call you Phil Galfond. Phil Galfond would like to embark on another omaha heads-up challenge. However, due to travel restrictions, it can only look for rivals in three US states. Phil Galfond finished his challenge with Chance Kornuth a few days ago. More precisely, Kornuth ended the fight by hoisting a.

The greatest comeback story is one that everybody missed. Remember when the Boston Red Sox came back from down 3-0 against the New York Yankees in the 2004 ALCS? Professional poker player Phil Galfond may have topped it recently after overcoming a €900,000 deficit in a 25,000-hand head-to-head online poker challenge.

After comparing the odds in our database with some of the biggest comebacks across every collegiate and professional league, this is -- at the very least -- one of the most unlikely comebacks I have ever witnessed.

Here's how it happened, and how Galfond had the mental fortitude to pull it off.

Phil Galfond's place in poker history

Galfond started taking poker seriously while attending college about 15 years ago. Two $50 online deposits were all it took for him to work his way to being considered one of the greatest No-Limit Texas Hold'em and pot-limit Omaha (PLO) players of all-time. The Marylander was renowned for playing high-stakes cash games on Full Tilt Poker under the moniker 'OMGClayAiken.' In February 2013, Galfond's all-time online earnings on Full Tilt Poker surpassed $10,000,000. He has also won three World Series of Poker bracelets.

An innovator as well, Galfond founded Run It Once Poker with the goal of keeping the online poker dream alive. The company launched publicly in February 2019 to most countries worldwide. A foundational part of his vision was making high-stakes poker battles public for everyone to witness again. Enter the Galfond Challenge.

Galfond set up a series of high-stakes heads-up (one-on-one) matches between himself and various challengers to be streamed live on Twitch (you can check out the remaining schedule here).

The first of these challenges was a 25,000-hand PLO match that began in January against an online regular known as VeniVidi. Whichever player was profitable over the course of the 25,000 hands would be deemed the winner. To add to the intrigue, Phil and VeniVidi agreed to a side bet on top of the actual money won or lost in the 25,000-hand battle. Phil risked €200,000 to VeniVidi's €100,000 that he would end up the profitable player.

Phil started the challenge with just one winning session in the first 15 days of play (roughly 10,000 hands into the challenge) and was down over €900,000 -- nearly $1 million. To put this into context, PokerShares -- a licensed and regulated website outside of the United States that offers people prices to pick winners of poker tournaments and political events -- even stopped offering odds on Phil winning the challenge at this point.

PokerShares founder Mike McDonald said: 'After Day 13 of the Galfond Challenge, we had him at 25-1 when he was down €750,000. I don't think we even had him available to bet on when he went over the €900,000 mark, but it likely would have been around 35-1 if we did.'

A price of 35-1 implies a 2.8% win probability, or rather that Phil would need to win the challenge 2.8% of the time for a 35-1 wager on him to break even. The fact that PokerShares would consider offering 35-1 means they calculated the true likelihood of Phil winning the challenge to be even less.

I saw an analogy to Phil's win being like coming back from trailing 30-0 in a baseball game. That's too extreme. No team has even won a game by more than 27 runs in the modern era (since 1900); the biggest come-from-behind win is only 12 runs. The Patriots comeback when they trailed the Falcons 28-3 in the third quarter of Super Bowl LI came to mind, but that fell short as betting markets with in-game prices were only offering 11-1 on a New England victory.

Perhaps the most translatable probabilistic analogy in sport comes from that 2004 ALCS. Looking at the prices of the four straight games Boston won individually gives us an expected win probability of roughly 6%. At the time, sportsbooks were offering anywhere from 10-1 to 14-1 on Boston to win the series.

To actually capture a similar likelihood to Galfond's poker challenge comeback, however, we need to dive into the win expectancy for the Red Sox in Game 4 when they trailed the Yankees in the ninth inning. According to Baseball-Reference, Boston's chances of winning the game as Kevin Millar walked to the plate to face Mariano Rivera were 23%. To complete that comeback and subsequently win the next three games and the AL pennant, the win probability goes down to just 2.6% -- right in range with where PokerShares would have lined Galfond when he was down over €900,000.

That's what Phil pulled off. Phil is the 2004 Red Sox in the ninth inning of Game 4 in the ALCS.

The mentality of a comeback

Phil accomplished the seemingly impossible, but it didn't come without a level of focus and confidence that rivals only the most elite competitors in the world. What was his mindset and process like during the €900,000 downswing midmatch? What enabled him to maintain that level of mental aptitude despite losing so regularly prior?

'I went into the match pretty confident, and it was pretty disappointing to start out the way it did,' Galfond told ESPN. 'I took the break to think everything through. There was a little bit of pride involved given that I really felt I could beat him over time, and I wanted to prove that mostly to myself.'

Galfond decided to step away from the match for a couple weeks, a move that cost him a €3,000 penalty per day. Still, he believed it was the right choice, telling ESPN, 'I really did believe that I still had an edge and could win over the 15,000 remaining hands and make a partial comeback.'

Fellow professional poker player Matt Berkey, who suffered a $5 million downswing a few years ago before taking a break to care for his grandmother, addressed Phil's decision to take a break on his recent podcast.

'Phil taking time off despite paying the penalty is really critical,' he said. 'We give ourselves way too much credit to be able to battle day in and day out and just shrug off the results, win or lose. It's just not how our mind is oriented, and it's not what motivates human beings. We need positive feedback loops ... and when the game you are playing doesn't offer them, you need to seek them out elsewhere.'

Galfond agreed with these sentiments and told ESPN that he took the break to take some time off and relax with his family for the first few days. But he also thought it was important to play against other opponents in the meantime to reinforce that he could still 'make good decisions and win.'

This is the case for all professional gamblers whether they be sports bettors or poker players, and an important lesson: Galfond was humble enough to recognize that he wasn't above a natural shift in psyche during a substantial downswing and stepped away.

What's most interesting about the break to me is that he trusted his process wholeheartedly and turned to poker to start feeling confident again -- even amidst a break from poker. Galfond noted, 'So much of where my mindset needed to be was just trying to block everything else out and play each hand individually. Solve the puzzle for that hand, and then move on to the next one.'

He did just that when the challenge against VeniVidi resumed. In arguably the most crucial session of the entire match, he cut into the deficit to the tune of €183,481 in a single day.

I asked if he was scared of the idea of losing more once he returned. He wasn't necessarily entitled to an immediate upswing just because he took time away.

'It's tough to know because my first session went very very well, so it was not something I had to deal with,' he said. 'I didn't ultimately know how I would react. I had played against other players and played well and felt good about that. But I knew it was very possible that if we got back into it and we were right back to where we were with VeniVidi raising every time I bet the river and every time I called he had [the best hand], it wouldn't have taken that much to spiral back into feeling as negatively as I did before taking the break.'

Phil rallied with that momentum and stormed all the way back. As the final session and 698 hands approached, he found himself down just €8,171. At the stakes they were playing, the match was virtually tied. We know how it ended.

Now, I'm rooting for a surplus of underdog stories in the upcoming months, maybe years. We need them. There will be people moving mountains creating success stories with likelihoods far less than 2.6%. Far more important ones too. I can't wait to hear them. After all, who doesn't like a good comeback story?

Despite the holidays break, the current Galfond Challenge between Phil and Chance Kornuth has taken a new path. After 45 sessions and 23,500 hands, Phil's profit has already reached $544,500.

Is Phil Galfond unstoppable?

In the middle of December last year, we already wrote about a new comeback in the Galfond Challenge. The next five sessions of the match proved it was only the beginning:

Session	Winner	Result
41 (17 December)	Phil Galfond	$73,500
42 (5 January)	Chance Kornuth	$33,000
43 (6 January)	Chance Kornuth	$46,500
44 (7 January)	Phil Galfond	$80,000
45 (8 January)	Phil Galfond	$192,000
TOTAL	Phil Galfond	$544,500

After 45 sessions (23,500 hands out of 35k), Chance Kornuth is already losing $544,500 to Phil Galfond.

From November 13, 2020, when Chance had the biggest advantage, to today (January 10, 2021), he has already lost $889,000 across eleven thousand hands. Until the end of this match, it remains to play about the same number of hands.

On the last stream, the Run it Once commentators said that now the Galfond Challenge must take a week break because Kornuth needs to make another deposit. He already faced the same problem in the past, because of deposit limits imposed by local regulation.

Phil Galfond Challenge

Galfond's interview

Phil doesn't tweet much about the challenge on his account but gave a short interview after the last session.

How do you rate your play in the last sessions?

F.G: I played well, but still, as a realist, I must say that there were several coolers in my favor, and I did not get into complex situations too often. But this, of course, is not a reason not to analyze this session. Even in the winning pots, I have to understand how well I got with Chance.

How much studying do you do during these matches?

F.G.: Now, really all I do is take screencaps of all the interesting hands and just go back over them. If I lock at them all the same day, then I remember the action as there are no hand histories.

Kornuth was able to purchase only $9,600 (less than 50bb) at last. Did you notice it first?

F.G.: I noticed right away, I attempt not to keep track of how I'm doing during a session; I didn't really know how much I was winning. When I saw he didn't have enough to reload, I knew that I must have been winning a lot.

I mostly ignore my emotions when I play until the session is over. I was just playing because I'm focused.

What do you see the chances of Chance continuing after today?

I would be surprised if he quit at this point. We're not super close, but we talk throughout the match, and I get the sense that he's relatively confident, and how I won today is just like cooler-cooler-flip. This is not a session that I think will really shake his confidence. I expect that he'll continue.

Many viewers said in the chat: with such a big advantage, wouldn't it be better to start playing more carefully and just try to lock up the win?

Phil Galfond Plo Strategy

F.G.: I think sitting out at any point before, like 500 hands left, is probably out of the question. Adjusting play at some point makes sense. However, it's a mathematical question. There is a 1.25M side bet in this match; to that effect, I'm probably supposed to fold out much sooner than I would in the VeniVidi challenge.