Five Thoughts About Phil Ivey's Website

April 01 2011, Rich Ryan

On March 8, Phil Ivey tweeted, "After NBC Heads Up, I've been working hard on my latest endeavor with many of my top poker friends." A few weeks later, PhilIvey.com arrived and with it came the slogan, "Now I'm going to teach the whole world to win at poker." With the whole poker world abuzz about Ivey's new undertaking, we thought we'd dig as deep (not with a real shovel) as we could to analyze a website, which literally has practically nothing there the moment. Yea we know -- we're pretty bad-ass.

The Website is Underwhelming

Only a few people know what Ivey’s net worth is, but I’m certain that he has enough money to hire an exceptional webmaster. Although the site hasn’t officially launched yet, it looks very bland and somewhat cheesy. There’s smoke rising from the “P” in his first name (does this mean he’s on fire?), and a there’s also big, ugly, gray bar in the middle that reads, “Coming Soon!” Hopefully, this will all look different when the site is finished because right now only two aspects of the page reflect Ivey – his stare and the music.

The Music is Perfect

If you haven’t seen the Academy Award-winning movie Inception, then this may be a mini-spoiler. The song, "Mind Heist" by Zack Hemsey, is perfect because (1) it sounds bad-ass, and (2) the concept of infiltrating multiple dream levels is comparable to Ivey’s third- and fourth-level thinking at the poker table. Like Dom Cobb in the movie, Ivey extracts vital information from his opponents and uses it against them in key situations. Unlike Cobb, Ivey can do it when his opponents are fully conscious. The only way the music would be better is if they played the entire song. They cut it off after just a few seconds, forcing you to refresh the page if you want to hear the epic track again.

The Less We Know, The Better

Anticipation and hype are two of the most powerful marketing tools in the world. We don’t know anything specific about this site, yet numerous podcasts have speculated about it and there is a thread on TwoPlusTwo called “Ivey’s Tweet/Phil Ivey starting a website” with over 50,000 views. The beauty of not having all the information is that no one can really be wrong. Any guess is acceptable, as long as it's somewhat educated, regarding the site and what Ivey will do with it. In the end, this could be one gigantic level, but for the time being anything is possible – and that’s a very powerful concept.

Training With Ivey Could Be Impossible

What do Phil Ivey and a random, amateur poker player have in common? Nothing. Yes, Ivey was once known as “No Home” Jerome and is famous for sleeping under the Atlantic City Boardwalk, but those days are long gone. Even if he can sit down and connect with a random person, will the pupil be able to understand Ivey’s teachings? And, conversely, can Ivey teach? Daniel Negreanu recently said that it’s hard to talk with Ivey about hands and that because “he’s not necessarily going to give you a lot of solid info on an approach against an opponent.” Maybe Ivey is simply playing coy for now, but this will remain a major concern until we find out otherwise.

Teach Us the Stare

Let’s be honest, the one thing Ivey can teach us that no one else can is the stare. His stare is so formidable and so intimidating that some people won’t even play pots against him. I’ve covered the World Series of Poker for two years now, and I swear I’ve never even seen the man blink once. Even if he can’t teach us how to execute the stare, the least he can do is tell us what he sees when he focuses his impenetrable gaze on his opponents. Can he really read souls, or is he daydreaming about shooting dice for $1 million a point on a white, sandy beach in South America?

Even the pros agree that Ivey is the sickest because of his stare.

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