In a game full of unique personalities, it isn’t often that one stands out more than the others. Sure, there are few made-for-television personalities in the poker world, but even in that small category there are players that stand out from that bunch. Enter a player who resembles the “Unabomber” (hence the nickname), with a hooded sweatshirt tied tightly around his head. Or, as in the case of this past World Series of Poker Main Event, when he came incognito as a man more than twice his age (see: elderly) where only a couple of his closest friends, and the WSOP suits knew who it really was, while the players at his own table appeared to never question the “old” man. We know this man has a flair for the dramatics, but he is also known to have one of the brightest minds in the game. That is why Phil “Unabomber” Laak is one of the more unique poker players in a world of unique poker players.
“The Hooded One,” Phillip Laak was born on September 8, 1972 in Dublin, Ireland. Shortly after his birth his family moved to San Francisco, California. Here he became a childhood friend of poker pro Antonio Esfandiari. Most people who first play poker, from a child to an adult, do so with the thought of making money. So it should be no surprise that Laak first started playing poker in order to buy more candy bars. Laak first started playing poker on a camping trip when he was around ten years old; at least it was some variation of poker that included betting that the third card drawn would be between the previous two you had drawn. If Laak was right he won the pot, which equaled more chocolate, particularly the “100 Thousand Dollar Bar” candy bar. What made Laak different than the other people playing the game, other than the fact he was playing for candy, was that he was already able to tell that this game had serious faults, and in turn was already studying the equity and odds of the game, and knowing that in the long run you wouldn’t be a winner in a game like this. In other words, his mind was far ahead of his peers, and in theory, on par with most adult poker players two and three times his age.
Laak continued to play and learn about poker as a child, but he also had other interests, which led him to heading across the country to attend the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. There he earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but he didn’t stick with engineering for long, instead taking a variety of jobs before his poker career started. Those jobs included being a repo man, real estate agent, stock trader, and sports bookie. That sounds like a man who may be lost and can’t make up his mind, but in another light it showed he had a wide variety of interests and the capabilities to perform them all, and by all accounts at a very high level. After spending a few years performing these jobs on the east coast, he moved back home where shortly after he began his poker career.
In 1999, Laak began frequenting the local Bay Area Casinos, including the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, which he considers his home casino. With tournament poker being a few years away from blowing up on the scene, Laak began concentrating on cash games. In just a few short years Laak was able to work his way up from the smallest stakes to the biggest cash games in the city, earning him the title as one of the best cash game players in the world.
In case Laak wasn’t unconventiona Read full
