After an inauspicious adolescence, Paul "The Truth" Darden, Jr. has come a long way. Born October 27, 1968 in New Haven, Connecticut and raised in a ghetto, in his teen years he hung out with thieves and drug dealers. In fact, at the tender age of 15, Darden was accused of murder but was lucky enough to be acquitted due to mistaken identity.
As a high school dropout, there were not many career options open to him and he says that the game of Poker helped him turn his life around. Darden states that one of his goals is to bring poker to the African American community and commented in one of his interviews "There is going to be salt and pepper all over the casinos when they see me win a big event."
Paul Darden began playing and winning at the local Foxwoods Casino as well as in the Stud Games at Atlantic City where they were very popular. He tells us that his father had a small poker club many years ago and taught Paul to play.
A positive event in his life was meeting up with Phil Ivey who became his friend and mentor. Although Paul's favorite games were Five Card and Seven Card Stud, Phil encouraged him to branch out into other games, especially Texas Hold'em No Limit ? due to his aggressive style of playing.
Paul has learned to be patient when playing and has become a master at reading "tells"? the movement and body language of other players. Different players react in different ways when playing a winning or losing hand and learning to recognize these actions is very helpful to his game.
Paul also has one World Series of Poker bracelet. As of this writing, his total live tournament winnings are in excess of $1,700,000.
Paul is married to Vicky and they have one child. He also has three children from different relationships. One of his important goals is to provide for his family so that his children will have a better life than he did while growing up.
He appears to be on a winning streak in Poker as well as in his life and we wish him well.
Intelligent? Phil became a full-time college student at the age of fifteen as a National Merit Scholarship finalist, graduating from Georgia Tech in 1990 with a BS in computer science.
As a businessman, Phil helmed a successful network software company, and left with millions in his bank account after the company was acquired by Cisco.
As an adventurer Phil has tracked mountain gorillas in Uganda, rafted the Zambezi River, traveled through the jungles of the Amazon, dived the Great Barrier Reef and traveled thousands of miles through the Australian Outback.
As an author, Phil has written several well-received books on poker, and as a celebrity he has been on the travel channel, had featured articles about him posted on Yahoo and Internet Life, and was the subject on an NPR Radio's "This American Life."
Although he is first and foremost a poker player, Phil did win a national championship in a Bridge Tournament. In tournament poker competition Phil has taken $400,000 in prize money for fourth place in the 2001 World Series of Poker main event, and has won over one million dollars in tournament play as of this writing.
In 2002, Phil appeared at the final tables in two tournaments; sixth place in Pot-Limit Hold'em and third place in Omaha 8 or better. Late in 2002, Phil was in Aruba , invited by UltimateBet.com to compete in The World Poker Tour Professional Division Inaugural Tournament. Phil won that one, defeating seven high-ranked players to win the $250,000 prize money. March of 2004 saw Phil take home the first place prize of $360,000 in the World Poker Tour "Bay 101 Shooting Stars" tournament.
If you want to see just a fraction of Phil Gordon's myriad adventures, go to www.ultimatesportsadventure.com and see how , in 2003, Phil and poker chum Rafe Furst set out in a huge RV for what they claimed would be "The greatest road trip in sports history."
Starting from San Diego at the Super Bowl on January 26th, the pair traveled the country in the RV named "Big Blue," attending more than 140 sporting events in 40 states, which included all three triple crown races, the Indy 500 , Daytona, The Masters, U.S. Open Tennis, 25 ball parks, The Final Four and the Stanley Cup Finals.
However, the main purpose of the trip was to foster awareness and raise money for cancer research, specifically to benefit The Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation (www.preventcancer.org/usa). Gordon and Furst signed autographs, sold donated sports memorabilia, and managed to raise $100,000. A fun trip for a worthy cause.
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