Hey, it’s a day of the week and partypoker has added yet another player to its list of sponsored pros. This time it is German poker player Philipp Gruissem, also known as “philbort” online. Gruissem only started playing poker nine years ago, got hooked when he won a tournament for $200, and is now a poker playing fiend, having won approximately one gazillion dollars.
“I feel great about joining partypoker!” Gruissem said on the partypoker blog. “They are now bringing healthy competition back into the market and partypoker has a new and fresh vibe that will grow our poker community.”
According to PocketFives.com, Gruissem has won more than $3.5 million in online poker tournaments, though it could be more, as those results are only from tournaments the site tracks with the screennames Gruissem provides. He is currently 423rd in PocketFives’ rankings, though he peaked at 23rd in 2010.
On the live tournament side, Gruissem has amassed more than $11 million in earnings, his best live cash coming in 2013 when he won the WPT Alpha8 £100,000 No-Limit Hold’em event for $1,379,840. In April 2014, he won almost exactly the same amount ($1,378,059) for taking the title in the EPT Grand Final €25,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller 8 Max.
If you look up and down Gruissem’s resume at TheHendonMob.com, you can see that theses sorts of high roller events are his specialty. Gruissem has yet to win a World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour title, though.
“I am honored that Philipp has agreed to join us at partypoker,” said partypoker Managing Director Tom Waters. “Philipp is such a well-respected player both in the German and global poker community that he is a perfect fit to join the team. He also has a great character and experience and will bring something a little different to the team.”
Gruissem is one of the four co-founders of Raising for Effective Giving (REG), a charitable organization which practices “effective altruism” in an effort to (put way too simply) target charities that can help the most people per dollar donated and in areas where those dollars can be used most efficiently. Gruissem founded the organization with fellow poker pros Liv Boeree, Igor Kurganov, and Stefan Huber.
Currently, Raising for Effective Giving targets three charitable causes: poverty alleviation, animal welfare, and risks from emerging technologies.
Gruissem has jumped right in to his relationship with partypoker, playing the Powerfest tournament series, which runs through this weekend. He plans on playing in the $5,200 buy-in event (wait…this is online poker, not the WSOP?) with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool on Sunday. That same day, he will make his first appearance as a partypoker ambassador in a live tournament when he plays in the MILLIONS Germany.
Cover photo credit: partypoker blog