A week which started badly when Daniel Negreanu let rip at Gordon on his blog, just got decidedly worse when Gordon found himself embroiled in an unseemly argument with Eric Cajelais, after getting knocked out of the WSOP Circuit event from San Diego.
Gordon made his fortune when the company he worked for, Netsys Technologies, was acquired by Cisco Systems, allowing Gordon to retire at just 27 and head off to travel the world.
A few years later Gordon returned and made his mark on the poker scene, finishing 4th in the WSOP main-event in 2001 and winning the WPT’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars event in 2004.
Gordon quickly became a poker celebrity, commentating on Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown TV series and writing various books on poker strategy. He also writes columns in various poker magazines.
And it was one of his magazine columns that got him in hot water with Daniel Negreanu, when he criticised Daniel’s friend and fellow professional poker player Erick Lindgren. The column elicited a furious response from Negreanu, who claimed Phil Gordon “done lost his mind,” and added that “Erick would trounce (Gordon) at the poker table. He’d slap him up silly.”
Such a stinging response from one of the most liked players on the circuit was probably not what Gordon had in mind when he wrote his column, but if he thought things couldn’t get any worse he was in for an unpleasant surprise.
The second moment to forget occurred during Day One of the WSOP Circuit Tournament in Harrah’s Rincon casino in San Diego. Phil Gordon had just been knocked out with A-7o against Barry Greenstein’s K-J and was busy bemoaning his bad luck, when the normally reserved Erik Cajelais (who wasn’t involved in the knock out) piped up, saying: “Why don’t you just take your beat and leave?”
A clearly gobsmacked Gordon stopped dead in his tracks, stared at Cajelais, and then retorted by asking: “What the fuck!? What the hell is your problem?”
“Just take your beat and leave,” repeated Cajelais. “You’ll be fine.”
Gordon, clearly not fine, responded with the veiled threat of: “We will meet again,” only for his tormentor to quickly answer: “You don’t go deep enough in tournaments, we’ll never meet again.”
A visibly shaken Gordon then spread his arms in a primal display of aggression and told Cajelais: “Any time you want to go, we’ll go.” But the muscle bound Cajelais merely agreed and sat watching as Gordon exited the poker room repeating his mantra of “anytime” to anyone who’d listen.
And with that ended seven awful days for Phil Gordon. Still, he can rest assured that things can only get better from here on in.