Poker Faces in the Crowd: Wild Bill Phillips

In 2002, Bill Phillips left Washington, D.C. for Los Angeles, where he planned to work as a screenwriter. He never made it to the West Coast. After stopping in New Orleans for the Super Bowl — because why not? — he met his future wife, Jessica, in a local bar and settled down South. Now a father of three and the co-founder of Gulf Coast Poker, Phillips is also a familiar face on the live tournament scene.

I met Wild Bill about two years ago in Biloxi, Mississippi, during the first leg of my poker road trip around the country. Since then, our paths have crossed in Las Vegas, where I saw his deep run in the 2015 WSOP Main Event, and along the Gulf Coast. This interview happened in May at Superior Grill, a lively Mexican restaurant in New Orleans. We discussed this summer’s World Series of Poker, preying on weak opponents, Monkey’s Minions, and bluffing balloon-wearing buffoons.

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Ben Saxton: You’re coming off a strong run at the WSOP Circuit Event at Harrah’s New Orleans, where you had three cashes, made two finals tables, and almost won the Casino Championship. How are you feeling now that the series is over?

Wild Bill Phillips: I’m not happy.

You wanted to be Casino Champion.

Yes. I want to be humble, because there are people who ran bad all week and didn’t even cash, and I ran good and it was a profitable week. But I went deep in every event that I played and bubbled a few tournaments. As much as I was happy about the early success, I feel like I kind of blew it.

When you say “I blew it,” do you think that you misplayed some hands?

I made at least one mistake every day. The hand when I busted the Main Event is kind of a cooler, but I think I played the hand poorly in a vacuum. We might have been one or two tables from the money, blinds are 2,000/4,000, and I get moved to a new table to the left of [four-time WSOP Circuit Event champ] Caufman Talley. I’ve got about 180,000 and he has me covered, so we’re both comfortable. The action folds to Caufman in the small blind, he makes it 12,000, and I call from the big blind with king-eight of clubs. The flop comes king-queen-ten with two clubs, so I have top pair and a flush draw, and Caufman bets 15,000. I considered raising but I felt like we’re too deep — I can’t just shove a flush draw — so I flat. The turn is a brick. I told myself that, if he bet again, I could semi-bluff on the turn and fold out ace-king or maybe even two pair. He did bet 25,000, which, retrospectively, seems like a “stick around” bet. But I went with my plan and shoved, he snap-called with ace-jack for Broadway, and I didn’t hit my club.

When I process the hand afterward, I’m unhappy about a few things. Usually when I move to a new table, I take an orbit or two off and play only the top of my range to get settled. Instead, I just sat down in the big blind and felt like I needed to take a stand, since Caufman is aggressive and he thinks I’m tight. I think that I should have flatted the turn and, if I bricked the river, paid off a value bet or folded to a shove.

Now that the series is over, what’s your plan before you head to Las Vegas?

I’ll play less poker. My family isn’t pleased that I was gone for a week-and-a-half during the Circuit Event. I played everything. So I’ll chill for a couple weeks, maybe take a vacation somewhere. We’ll see about that. It’s kind of hard to travel with a two, a four, and a six-year-old.

What are your kids’ names?

Landon is two, Harper is four — she’s a girl — and Jackson is six. I believe that some boys are named Harper, although it’s mostly a girl’s name.

Where does “Harper” come from?

My wife likes that name. Jackson is my middle name, and Landon — I’m a big soccer fan, so I had both Landon and Donovan as possibilities. I grew up in Germany when I was a kid and we played soccer every single day. In the 1980s I knew more about Liverpool than the Dallas Cowboys.

Where’s home for you?

Here, I guess. I’m kind of a nomad. I’ve lived in North Carolina, Germany, Delaware, Tennessee, Virginia, D.C., and New Orleans. I wanted to be a screenwriter and planned to move to L.A. with a friend, but I visited New Orleans first and met my wife somewhere between Mardi Gras and Jazzfest.

Where?

I always wanted to marry a girl raised in the South, and I met her at a bar called Grit’s, which stands for Girls Raised in the South. I got a job in telecommunication sales, got into poker, and eventually started Gulf Coast Poker with my friend Gene Dudek.

What were those early years like?

Maybe the first time I played at a casino, in the early 2000s, I played 3/6 limit on New Year’s Eve. I battled a guy who was wearing a huge balloon on his head, and I thought to myself, “This guy has no idea what he’s doing.” If he was the biggest fish in the room, then I was the second biggest. I’m pretty sure I had a flush draw that missed, but I had seen Chris Moneymaker’s infamous bluff against Sammy Farha and knew that you bluff to win hands, right? So the river comes and we’re raising each other back and forth — twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight — until we each have about forty bucks left. I fired another raise into his forty dollars, and somehow he folded. Of course this was the worst educational experience of my life.

It affirmed absolutely the wrong thing: to bluff people on the river.

Exactly. In reality, that third bet is either nuts versus second nuts, and eventually the second nuts just flats. But no, I had found the one guy who could fold his hand. I also remember that the dealer looked at my hand, and then he looked at me in shock because I had nothing — I had complete air. He just shook his head and mucked the cards.

I can’t believe that you didn’t show the bluff.

I didn’t even know! I was a beginner, I was just happy to win the hand.

When did you start taking poker seriously?

Eventually I played no-limit cash and tournaments. I’m kind of a life nit, so if I had a bad session and lost only a hundred bucks, it really bothered me. The prospect of sitting with five hundred bucks or whatever, no matter how much money I had in my wallet, was pretty daunting. But I got over that at some point. I’m always asking how I could have played a hand better. Whenever someone tells me “the answer is always this,” then I want to put myself in that situation and do the opposite. I look at poker like a puzzle.

Yeah, that’s a beautiful thing about the game. There’s always going to be adaptation.

I read that Johnny Moss, after he won the first two WSOP championships, went from being the best player in the world to becoming a target that everybody wanted to play with. His decline was mostly age-related. I’m sure that Doyle Brunson has either gone through that or he will. One day you’re the old good player, the next day you’re the target.

Which introduces another dilemma — when and how to walk away with grace, or whether to go down fighting.

All of this reminds me of something that I wanted to ask you. Do you remember the guy at our table a few weeks ago? The one who I called with pocket twos from the big blind?

The guy who kept reloading for a hundred bucks and moving all in with any two cards? Yes, I remember.

I’m almost embarrassed by that call because I didn’t care if I won or lost that hand. Either he’d have 200 that he could turn into 400 before I got it back from him, or I’d win the hundred right away. I felt like he was going to leave soon, so the call was a conscious effort to keep him around.

Yeah, I think it raises larger questions about poker-playing and how you have a vested interest in avoiding stronger players and exploiting weaker ones. That’s one of the weird things about poker: in other sports and competitive games, you go up the ladder and face the best players. But, in poker, you’re incentivized to avoid doing precisely that.

Right, game selection. You’re the fish if you tell everyone how soft the game is. So I had misgivings about that hand with pocket twos. I wanted to keep that guy in the game. I could be wrong, but I think that’s a very — cold way of looking at the situation. You know what I mean?

Definitely. I will say that, in practice, I do the exact same thing. When I’m in the game, I’m trying to win, and that involves being predatory — changing seats to get position on the fish, topping up my stack, whatever it might be. Things get hazier for me when the game blends into the metagame — when you start texting fish and building games around them. I don’t know if I’m comfortable crossing that line.

I was trying to explain this to my mom, who asked: how do you feel if someone has a compulsive gambling problem? Maybe I’m being inconsistent, but I don’t believe that I’m equipped to judge whether someone’s a problem gambler. That’s the casino’s responsibility. Have I quit a game that felt wrong to me? Where a guy probably shouldn’t be there? I’ve done that. But is that necessarily expected of me? I don’t know the right answer.

Yeah.

Here’s a good story that relates to what we’re talking about. I was playing 3/6 limit back when I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m hungover, I’m chasing my losses, and I decide, at some point, that I’ll get even by slowplaying my big hands and fastplaying my bluffs. The table catches on. After a while some dude turns to me and says, “I really hate to say this, but I don’t think that you should ever play poker again. You’re the worst player I’ve ever met.”

He said that to convince you to stop giving your money away?

Yes. He spoke from a place of niceness. But the way I perceived it was: ok, Challenge Accepted. If that’s where I am, then I’m gonna figure out how to beat this game.

So it motivated you in the long run.

I was aware of how bad I was playing and that the wheels were off. But the way that he said those words, as though he were doing me some kind of grand favor, has always stuck with me. If I ever win the Main Event, I’ll tell that story.

You’ll be playing your third Main Event in a row this year as one of “Monkey’s Minions.” Who are the Minions?

They’re a group run by Will Souther, who, along with a group of investors, stakes a handful of players in the Main Event. Two years ago, when I was picked for the first time, I finished just outside the money. Last year I was staked again and made it to Day 5. I was happy with how I played last year.

You went deep, finishing in 223rd place for $40,433. How did being staked by a group of investors affect your play?

I’ll give you a perfect example. Last year the other four Minions busted on Day 1. Early on Day 2, a high-stakes cash player overbet shoved the river when I only had a bluffcatcher. I tanked for ten minutes, apologized to the table, and kept thinking about all the investors who were upset that the other four Minions had already busted. Did I really want to bust on a hero call? Then I asked myself if I’d be all right making the call with $10,000 of my own money. Ultimately I decided that I would call with my own money, so I had to call with theirs.

And you made the right decision.

I did make the right decision, so it’s a happy story now, right? But if the guy has two pair or a set or something crazy, then I feel pretty stupid.

Well, you’ve certainly earned your spot with the Minions for a third year. Will your gameplan change this summer?

The way that I played, strategy-wise, is the way I’ll play this year. I’ll enter a slew of tournaments leading up to the Main Event: some smaller bracelet events, the WPT 500, and some events at the Venetian, the Aria, and the Golden Nugget. Hopefully I won’t be playing the Little One for One Drop.

Because you’ll be going deep in the Main.

Right.

*originally published in the July 2016 issue of Two Plus Two Magazine