Phil Ivey's Interview with Joey Ingram [How He Won $16Million in One Night]

Phil Ivey and Joey Ingram recently met up to film what is the most hotly anticipated episode of the Poker Life Podcast ever, we reckon. Next week’s promised appearance of Tom “durrrr” Dwan might also be a contender, but more on that later.

Ivey looked fresh and in great shape as he revealed what’s been going on in his life recently, before confirming that he is raring to go for the next chapter in an already incredible playing career.

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It’s Good to Reset

Ivey starts the interview by telling Ingram just how well life is going right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a terrible situation for most of the world but it has allowed many of us to reset our lives, looking to weed out aspects that are clearly negative.

In Ivey’s case, this has consisted of a reassessment of what is important and what isn’t. Regular yoga and meditation coupled with spending more time with his family has put his life back in order to where he feels that he is “at a really good place” in his life right now.

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Rollercoaster

The chat quickly moves onto Ivey’s career, where Ingram reminisces over his own early days in poker where he would spend hours watching Ivey playing a mixture of NL Hold’em, PLO and mixed games all at the same time, wondering how on earth did he do it.

Ivey laughs and agrees that it’s been “a hell of a ride.” Ingram prompts him to tell what, if anything, would he have done differently. The answer is as what you would expect from any 44-year-old man; plenty of regret, but also gratitude for the experiences. Lots of good times but, of course, a partying lifestyle isn‘t good for a poker player trying to get the best out of themselves.

We hear more about Ivey’s early days as a poker player and he describes the game as his escape from reality. From the ages of 18 - 32 he would play all day every day and never worked on himself. He understood that if you want to be good at anything then you have to put everything into it, especially if you want to be great.

This lifestyle later led to him being “emotionally unavailable” in every area of life after learning how to switch off emotions while playing for up to 16 hours every day for 12 or 13 years.

A big change that Ivey made was to end his relationship with alcohol. He laughs as he tells Ingram how he needed a break from partying and this change has improved every area of his life.

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Poker in the Future

Ivey still enjoys playing online poker, he tells us, but acknowledges that it is much tougher than live. He much prefers being able to observe his opponents in the flesh to negate any edge he gives away on the theory side.

There is also chat about Ivey’s partnership with Poker Kings. He is convinced that the platform will grow into one of the main players in due course because of the people behind it. This is actually how he chooses to invest these days. Ivey says investing is essentially betting on the people behind the idea, which is a nice take on it.

To end with, Ingram tries to get Ivey to give some power rankings for the best players around today but he refuses, laughing while saying “they don’t need to know.”

Ivey promises his fans that he will be back in action as soon as possible and thinks that it is nice that people still care to hear about what he’s been up to.

Check back in next week for the expected appearance of Tom Dwan for more of the same.