Yeah good chance it was a puff piece or semi-puff-piece by someone friendly with him.

Or ESPN was so desperate for "sports" coverage right now that they actually assigned someone to cover this, who wrote it from the angel of making Phil look like a hero.

Pretty funny how he's called an "innovator" for owning Run It Once, given that there's only one thing innovative about the entire site ("Splash the Pot"), and it's still a missing some huge basics like tournaments. The real modern innovative site is GGPoker, as I mentioned on a recent radio show. Not surprisingly, it's also fully functional software ("superuser friendly", as someone we know once put it), and is now one of the most popular sites behind Pokerstars.