This week, the real estate section of Yahoo featured an article from Curbed.com highlighting the unique penthouse of young poker star Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond. Located in New York City’s East Village, the main attraction of the residence is, get this, a slide.
That’s right. Galfond has a slide in his house. And it’s no kiddie slide, either. When Galfond found where he wanted to live, he bought not one, but two one-bedroom condos, one on top of the other. Of course, a bachelor has no need for two separate domiciles in the same building, so he brought in Turett Collaborative Architects (TCA) to help him combine the two into a single unit.
In TCA’s words, “TCA has had a lot of experience connecting smaller apartments together into a seamless whole, but this adventurous client requested something we’d never seen before. In a newly constructed multi-residential development, in the East Village of NYC, TCA had the opportunity to meet a unique client’s desire to combine two penthouse condos… with a helical slide.”
The top of the stainless steel slide, which begins near Galfond’s office on the top floor, appears to be enclosed in its own atrium of sorts. It curves downward, in full view of the city, to the living area.
According to the article, which was linked from the front page of Yahoo, Galfond purchased the two penthouses in October 2008 for a combined $3.14 million.
The majority of the poker community learned about the funhouse a year later, when Galfond posted a picture of the slide on his blog at Bluefire Poker. One person commented that once Galfond is older, the slide will not be as much fun as it is now. Another responded logically by saying, “Even if it’s never used, it’s cool modern art.”
And by the way, there is a staircase; Galfond does not have to walk up the slide to get upstairs.
Much of the discussion this week has revolved around the purchase price and whether or not the number was a coincidence. As one person put it, “Odds that he offered 3.14 million bux (i.e. ‘pi million bux’) for the 2 units intentionally? I can sort of imagine his broker saying, ‘You probably need to offer like 3.1 or 3.2 million to get them both’ and jman then deciding to make it a nice offer of ‘pi million.'”
Said PokerStars Home Games guru Lee Jones, “Should check if the actual price was $3,141,593…”
Galfond is widely regarded as one of the best online poker players in the world. He is the only person not permitted to play against Tom Dwan in the Full Tilt Poker Durrrr Challenge, mostly because he is a good friend of Dwan’s and the two likely don’t want to go head-to-head for so much money.
Galfond has also been a prolific player on the live tournament circuit, but sticks mostly to high-profile events. He has seven lifetime cashes in the World Series of Poker, including his first and only bracelet in 2008 when he won a $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event for $817,781. His most recent live tournament cash was for $30,000 when he made the round of 16 in the 2011 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
