Legends of Poker - Season 2 - Sep 3, 2003

Dot-Com millionaire, Paul Phillips came to the final table at the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker as a massive chip leader. He faced five other opponents at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles on September 3rd 2003 that included poker legend TJ Cloutier, Farzad “Freddy” Bonyadi, Chip Jett, Phil “The Unibomber” Laak and Mel Judah.

Action started with Paul Phillips using his stack to bully the opposition around, famously showing a jack-deuce bluff against Phil Laak. A few hands later Laak was the first to go home after losing a race with pocket sevens against poker legend, TJ Cloutier. Freedy Bonyadi made his exit next, followed by Chip Jett leaving Judah, Phillips and Cloutier left to fight it out as they evened out in chips. After losing the chip lead to Mel Judah, Paul Phillips pushed all in with pocket 7’s and was called by TJ with pocket Jacks. Phillips hit his two outer on the turn and just barley had TJ covered.

As Judah and Phillips went into the heads up battle, an odd combination consisting of Lou Diamond Phillips, a unicycler and Shawna Hyatt presented the money to the table. On the final hand both players caught a straight on the river, Judah with the higher end and Phillips with the lower one. Judah pushed all-in and Phillips took a long time before finally calling the bet. Once down to only T30,000 in chips, Mel Judah fought his way back to win the title and the $579,375.