Phil Laak

Phil “The Unabomber” Laak (pronounced “lock”; born September 8, 1972 in Dublin, Ireland) is a professional poker player, now residing in San Francisco, California.

Early life

Laak was raised in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and now lives in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in mechanical engineering and worked as an engineer, a repo man, a stock day-trader, and a real estate investor, prior to getting into open poker games in California.

He is former roommates with fellow professional poker player and close friend Antonio Esfandiari.

Poker career

Laak won the World Poker Tour (WPT) Celebrity Invitational in February 2004. He has made two other WPT final tables since - 6th place in both the season 2 Battle of Champions and the 2005 Five Diamond World Poker Classic.

At the 2005 World Series of Poker (WSOP), Laak finished second to Johnny Chan in the $2,500 pot limit hold ‘em event.

Laak defeated Ram Vaswani to win the inaugural William Hill Poker Grand Prix, taking home the £150,000 first prize.

He has also competed in numerous Poker Royale series.

Laak appears on seasons two, three, and four of High Stakes Poker on GSN.

Served as the dealer on the short-lived television series E! Hollywood Hold’em.

On NBC’s Poker After Dark Laak won the weekly prize of $120,000. The tournament was entitled “Phil Phil” because both Phil Laak and Phil Hellmuth were contenders. Apart from Laak and Hellmuth the table consisted of Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Harman, and Erik Seidel. This tournament aired the week of January 15.

As of 2007, Laak’s total live tournament winnings exceed $1,200,000.

Laak is also a writer who writes a monthly column in the popular poker magazine Bluff. His irreverent and off color humor is hugely successful for Bluff Magazine.

Laak has teamed up with webcomic Life’s A Bluff as a creative consultant and to offer his professional endorsement. Laak will also be appearing in a spin-off from the regular Life’s A Bluff comic entitled Laak and Loaded.

At the 2007 conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, British Columbia, Laak competed against, and beat, Polaris, a poker playing computer program developed at the University of Alberta, in two of the four rounds with the remaining rounds being a loss and a draw.

Nickname and personality

Laak became known widely in the poker scene as the “Unabomber” because of the hooded sweatshirt (given to him by fellow poker professional Gus Hansen) and sunglasses he wears at the table, making him resemble the forensic sketch of Theodore Kaczynski who was known as the Unabomber. Another nickname that is less frequently used is Darth Maul, for his resemblance to the hooded villain.

Laak is known for pulling closed the drawstrings on his sweatshirt’s hood to hide his face during large hands, and is well-known for his other antics at the poker table, such as doing push-ups to celebrate winning hands, running behind the dealer during showdowns to see which card will come up next, and getting entirely ready to leave whenever he pushes all-in (usually significant as he replaces his shoes). On the Poker After Dark program in 2007 he laid down on the floor during a particularly stressful hand.

Laak is known also for his unusual and inventive manner of speech. He is credited with coining the poker term “felted” to mean having lost all of one’s chips (i.e. nothing left in front of the player except the table felt).

He is currently dating actress Jennifer Tilly, who won a WSOP bracelet in 2005 in the $1,000 buy-in Ladies no limit hold’em championship. Tilly has since been nicknamed “The Unabombshell.”

Laak now stars on “I Bet You,” a TV show with fellow professional poker player Antonio Esfandiari on MOJO HD in which the friends make bets on anything ranging from who can make more tips bartending to the price of a t-shirt.

For the last few years, Laak has been highly regarded as one of the top “cash game” poker players on the circuit. He regularly plays the highest no-limit games at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. He was seen playing the biggest cash games at the 2007 World Series of Poker at the Bellagio and the Venetian. He also cashed twice in $5,000 buy-in and $3,000 buy-in events at the 2007 World Series of Poker; his winnings for these events were $29,073 and $7,418, respectively.