But once you talk to Phil Gordon and realize how humble he is and you see that he really wants to share his knowledge with others, it's hard to stay jealous for very long. The guy really deserves everything he has. Continuing with his generous spirit, Gordon was willing to sit down with us and talk to about life, cards and celebrities who have no business at a poker table.

You launched a network management software company at a young age, which sold for $95 million after only three years. From there, you were able to retire and travel around the globe, doing things other people only dream about like diving with Great White Sharks, rafting down the Amazon and scaling Mt. Kililmanjaro. What is it like to be able to do that at a young age? And what was the most fun thing you were able to do with all of that money?
Well, some people dream about it, some people have nightmares about it, especially in terms of the Great White thing. I've led an extraordinarily lucky life so far, but one of the things I'm most proud of is taking advantage of the opportunities presented to me. When my company got bought out, I was 26 and had enough money that I didn't have to sit behind a desk. I decided to do something for myself and traveling was really it. One of the most fun experiences of traveling, of course, is meeting new people and trying out their culture and seeing what the world has to offer. People say, "What's your favorite place? What's your most fun thing to do?" I generally refuse to answer that question - only because when you answer that question, you denigrate the other places that you visited and the other people that you met. Every single place in the world has something to offer and if you go in with that attitude, you'll get the most out of each place you visit.

I also heard you did something any sports fan would be jealous of - you went on an ultimate sports trip, hitting every major sporting even in one year.
That really was an interesting year. Basically, I'd seen most of the world - 50 countries on six continents. While I was in Africa with my buddy Rafe, who was in a similar situation to me in terms of finances and state in life, we came up with this idea for what we called "the ultimate sport's adventure." We were going to buy an RV, trick it out and basically take it on the road across the United States for a year, going to all the different major sports events in the world.

So we started at the Super Bowl. If you're going to start any sports trip, you've got to start at the Super Bowl. And the idea was Super Bowl to Super Bowl - every major event in sports and everything else we could pack in between. Over the course of a year, we did 140 sports events, we visited 41 states and we put 43,000 miles on our RV, which was nearly destroyed by the end of the tour. That was a fantastic trip - we went to the Masters, the Kentucky Derby, the Final Four, the Little League World Series, the college World Series, the professional World Series, 26 baseball stadiums, the U.S. Open tennis, all three Triple Crown races, the Indy 500, the Daytona 500, the Stanley Cup finals, the NBA finals, we played the top 25 public golf courses in the country, including Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass and Shadow Creek here in Las Vegas. All I can tell you is the 372 days on the road eating stadium food will do a tremendous amount of damage to your liver. My cholesterol started at about 180 and ended at about 280 and I'm just now, two years later, finally back in fine form after the year of debauchery.

Would you ever consider doing it again? What would you do differently?
I'm not going to be doing that trip anytime soon. I lived in that RV for 18 months and I'm pretty much done with that. Maybe when I get a little older, if I have kids and my kids turn 18 or 20 or something, then I might throw them in the back of it for four or five months and travel around and go see how things have changed, but for now it's no land yachts.

So from there, how did you get involved in playing poker professionally? Were you just bored and looking for a hobby?
I stumbled into it. I never really set out to be a professional poker player, have a TV show, anything like that. People don't remember, but five years ago, poker was no big deal and if you told people you were a professional poker player, they looked at you like you were an idiot. Now it's the cool thing to do. I started playing when I was seven, my great aunt taught me to play and when I moved to California in 1991, obviously the card rooms out here are legal. I started playing at Garden City and San Jose and Bay 101 and a couple of the other local card rooms. My skills improved, I fell in with the right group of guys that were serious about the game. We started taking road trips to Vegas. All those early road trips are chronicled on our website, Tiltboys.com, including pictures, some of which are still haunting me to this day, including the one where we dress like women to play in a women's only poker tournament.

From there, I just started winning and the stakes started getting bigger and bigger. Then, when my company got bought out, I had some money and I decided I'd give this poker thing a shot after I got done traveling. I got lucky and finished at the final table in the World Series of Poker, then got invited down to Aruba for the UltimateBet deal in season one of the World Poker Tour - I won that tournament. I was winning right at the right time. You could win a World Poker tour tournament now and finish fourth at the World Series and no one would know who you are because there are just so many people that are playing, but because I got that early media exposure, when the guys from Celebrity Poker were putting together the show, they thought I'd be a good host, they called me up, asked me if I was busy. I said call me when you got the show sold, six months later, they sold it to Bravo and I was on set filming a TV show. That's how it all happened.

You have won over a million dollars in poker tournaments over the past four years and as you mentioned, you placed fourth in the 2001 World Series of Poker Championship. With so many people entering the tournament every year, what do you think your chances are of winning a WSOP bracelet in the future?
A bracelet, my chances are pretty good. It depends on the event. In a 1,000 person field, you'd say the average player was one out of 1,000 to win a bracelet, I would say that I was probably one out of 250. I'm certainly no better than that. I made two final tables last year at the World Series - I finished third in one no limit event and I finished eighth in another event and I won a couple hundred thousand, but any hand goes differently there, I've got a shot. That was two events; I only played nine events last year. I don't know if I can continue that pace - the fields are getting larger, the players are getting better. It's tough to win these days, man. I don't know what else to tell you. There's a lot of luck involved in tournament poker and one hand can put you on the sidelines. It doesn't matter how good you play. If you get all of your money in with two aces against a guy with two tens, that guy with two tens is still going to spike one on you 18 percent of the time.

Do you think poker will continue to grow in popularity or do you think this is its "15 minutes of fame," and the bubble will burst at some point?
I think we've got a good 18 months left in growth. I think this year at the World Series, we're going to see 7,500 players. I think the following year we'll see 9,000, then it's going to level off at 8,000 or so. That would be my prediction. That comes with no guarantees. But if I wanted to put an over/under line at the World Series of Poker, there should be 7,500 players.

Obviously, poker has been widely glamorized over the last couple of years on television as its popularity continues to grow. What is the life of a poker professional really like? Talk a little bit about the ups and downs of a full-time poker player.
Don't leave your day job. This is a very hard way to make an easy living. The fluxuations involved and the bank roll that's required make this an extraordinarily difficult proposition for people that want to come in and just give it a shot. The best example I can give you is Chris Ferguson. Everyone knows Jesus. Easily one of the best players in the world, he'd be on everyone's top ten list. When the World Poker tour started, Chris thought he was going to tear it up. Chris went 33 World Poker tour tournaments in a row without making the money. Forget making the final table - didn't even make the money. That cost him about $330,000 in buy-ins, plus probably another $200,000 in travel expenses and such.

You have to go deep in these things, you have to have a big bank roll, big purse behind you in order to make it on tour these days. It is an extraordinarily expensive and grinding lifestyle. The travel will get you. The smoky environments will get you. Most of all, one thing I've come to realize is that the world of poker, this really is one of the only professions in the world where it pays an enormous amount of money to surround yourself with the biggest idiots possible. At the end of the day, it becomes kind of a grind trying to find those weak players and exploit their weaknesses. What I'm finding is I'm just a little tired of searching out and destroying weakness. I would rather help people. That's why I've spent more time recently teaching than playing. By teaching poker, I'm still getting my poker fix, I'm still getting the adrenaline rush, but I'm getting it by helping people instead of hurting them. For me, that's a lot more satisfying right now.