Phil "The Unabomber" Laak was born September 8, 1972 in Dublin, Ireland. A very unique professional poker player. Laak became known widely in the poker scene as the "Unabomber" because of the hooded sweatshirt (given to him by fellow poker professional Gus Hansen) and sunglasses he wears at the table, making him resemble the forensic sketch of Theodore Kaczynski who was known as the Unabomber. Another nickname that is less frequently used is Darth Maul, for his resemblance to the hooded villain. Laak is known for pulling closed the drawstrings on his sweatshirt's hood to hide his face during large hands, and is well-known for his other antics at the poker table, such as doing push-ups to celebrate winning hands, running behind the dealer during showdowns to see which card will come up next, and getting entirely ready to leave whenever he pushes all-in (usually significant as he replaces his shoes). On the Poker After Dark program in 2007 he laid down on the floor during a particularly stressful hand.
Laak won the World Poker Tour (WPT) Celebrity Invitational in February 2004. At the 2007 conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, British Columbia, Phil Laak beat Polaris, a poker playing computer program developed at the University of Alberta, in two of the four rounds with the remaining rounds being a loss and a draw. Laak is known also for his unusual and inventive manner of speech. He is credited with coining the poker term "felted" to mean having lost all of one's chips (i.e. nothing left in front of the player except the table felt). He is currently dating actress Jennifer Tilly, who won a WSOP bracelet in 2005 in the $1,000 buy-in Ladies no limit hold'em championship. Jennifer Tilly has since been nicknamed "The Unabombshell."
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