How often do you play poker?
Not very often. I'm playing online at FullTiltPoker.com about 10 hours a week. I play low limit games and every penny that I win online I donate to charity. I donate it to the Cancer Research and Prevention foundation. That's kind of my time donation to a good cause. Other than that, I'm playing a few tournaments, but I'm not going to play World Poker Tour tournaments for a while until they fix their player release. They are extraordinarily unfair to the players right now. Joining me in that boycott is Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer and probably 30 other top pros. So you're not going to see us playing in those tournaments until those guys can get their act together and come up with a release that's fair for the players. I'm going to play some of the World Series of Poker circuit events and certainly I'm going to play 30 or 35 of the events this year at the World Series of Poker. I'm very much looking forward to that. I haven't been playing very much, I've been very busy traveling around and I'm writing a new book that will be out in October. All of that stuff takes time and it takes time away from the tables. But, as I said before, I've come to realize that I like teaching the game almost as much as I like playing it and that's what I'm devoting my time to right now.

In your new book, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book, you give a lot of insight into the way you play poker. You go into great detail about how you react in various situations and give away a lot of information about your game. You are basically walking people through the way you play. What was the idea behind the book?
I'm not the best player in the world and I've never contended to be. I'm definitely a winning player, I've made it to the final table more often than most and I've been able to win a few tournaments here and there and I've had a lot of success at the table. All I want to do in the book is show you how I play. If you disagree with me, you very well may be right, but disagree with me for a reason because the things I'm doing at the table, I'm doing for a purpose. There's a very mathematical underpinning to the way I play poker. For me, poker is 20 percent mathematics, 70 percent psychology and 10 percent brass balls. I can't help you with the brass balls part, you either have that or you don't, but I can definitely help you with the math and I can definitely help you with the psychology. I set out in the book to teach you all of the math you needed to know and I do that in a fairly effective and efficient way in the book - straightforward, you don't need to be a mathematician, you don't need to be an MIT rocket scientist, all you have to have is a fourth grade education to do all the math that's required to play winning poker. So I lay that out and I walk you through the psychology of playing a winning game. For some people that's different, some people play in an incredibly loose style like Gus Hansen, some people play an extremely tight style like Dan Harrington. I'm not like either of those guys. I'm somewhere in between. I generally let the table dictate how fast or slow that I'm playing and that seems to work for me. I want to outline exactly how I play and give you an inside view of what helps me win as much as I've won in the past three or four years.

The book has been out since October 4, 2005 and thus far has sold 75,000-80,000 copies and thousands of people have e-mailed me success stories from the table after reading my book. It's really an astounding outpouring of support for the book and nearly everyone says that it's changed the way that they approach the game and they've gone from a losing player to a winning player or from a winning player to a more winning player. That's very satisfying for me.

The thing is – there's something in there for everyone. If you're a rank beginner, you can find stuff that will help you. If you're an intermediate player, there's a ton of stuff in there that will help you and even if you're the most advanced player in the world, I personally will guarantee you that there will be things in the book that you will read that you've never read anywhere else. I know that to be the case because I've read every single poker book that's been written.

So what is the plan for the new book?
The new book is called the Little Blue Book; it's a follow up to the Little Green Book. If there is one criticism that I've heard about the book, it's that there aren't enough real world examples. With the Little Blue Book, I'm going to fill that void. This is going to be 100 plus hands, actual hands that I've played in live competition, fully annotated, harking back the principals from the Little Green Book and showing you those principals in action.

A lot of people know you from the Celebrity Poker Showdown. What is it like hosting that show? Do you ever get frustrated with the way some of the celebrities play?
First of all, let me just say that job was the best job in poker, bar none. I reached an extraordinarily large audience on a week to week basis and I think the show was successful because you got to see the celebrities as they truly are. No one's on there pitching products, no one's on there pitching their latest movie. They're all on there to have a good time – it's Las Vegas, it's the Palms Casino, everyone's drinking, cutting up. It's a comedy and entertainment show more than it is a poker show.

That being said, the poker that is played is sometimes completely abysmal. And that's okay. They're not there to be professional poker players. They're there to raise some money for their charity, get their charity some notoriety, get some TV time and have a good time in Vegas. I don't really get all that upset with people that don't play well. I wish they'd play better, but then again, I've done a couple of acting appearances here recently and they probably wish that I acted better.

Be honest here, who are some of the best and worst celebrities you've seen on the show?
I'll do the worst first. I'm not at all ashamed to tell you that Scott Stapp may be the worst player that I've ever run up against. Adam Rodriguez from CSI: Miami shouldn't quit his day job. Martin Sheen was incredibly distracted, is a nice way that I'll put that.

Some of the great players - James Woods is a very, very good player. In fact, I just saw that James finished 18th at the big Commerce Casino tournament recently. Mena Suvari is surprisingly good, Michael Ian Black, Hank Azaria, Matthew Perry, the Masterson kids - Danny and Chris, very good players. Shannon Elizabeth's got game. People say, "Oh, the celebrities are so bad," but they're no better or worse than the people playing in your home game.

I've got one last thing for you here. I'm going to do a word association. I'll just throw out a name and tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.

Las Vegas.
Greed.

Dave Foley.
Drunk.

Kevin Pollak.
William Shatner.

Phil Ivey.
Money.

The World Series of Poker.
Prestige.

Phil Gordon.
Lucky.

The future.
Unknown.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, March 2006. You can get autographed copies of Phil Gordon's Little Green Book or private poker lessons over the phone by donating to PreventCancer.org.