California’s Galen Hall took the dive to be a professional tournament poker player back in 2009. Introduced to the game in 2001 when he was at high school, a decade later saw Hall scoop a huge and prestigious score when he won the EPT PCA $10,000 Main Event for $2,300,000. Beating a field of over 1,500 players, Galen made a very impressive fold in the latest stages of the tournament when he was heads-up versus Chris Oliver – a fold that saved him from finishing in second and allowed him to get the victory. In the hand, he folded 8c4d on 5d3d2c2hAs after his opponent raised Galen’s river bet all-in with Ad2s.
One year later, Hall’s run at the PCA continued when he fell just short of the trophy in the $100,000 Super High Roller event, finishing in 3rd place for $470,000. He outlasted the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Jonathon Duhamel and Vanessa Selbst in an extremely tough field of players. He has also cashed in all but one WSOP since his professional career began in 2009, contributing to his total live earnings exceeding over $4,000,000.
Galen Hall has also had some impressive scores in the online world. Going by the name ‘Turk Malloy’ at PocketFives and playing under a variety of screennames across multiple sites, Hall earned more than $1,100,000 in tournament winnings between 2009 and 2011 through online poker. However, his online presence appears to be less active as of late, with his focus shifting more towards live poker since his large scores at the PCA.
Galen is also involved in business outside of poker, and aspires to develop and expand his own company in the future. After working on his MBA at Stanford Business School whilst still playing poker, his vision for a future in business becomes obvious. In 2014, he worked on creating a mobile dating app – ‘Carbon Dating’ – as he believed that his skillset suited the industry well. Speaking in an interview with Lee Davy in 2014, Galen said:
‘I have worked in start-ups before, so I was familiar with them. My biggest skill is looking at really big, and messy, collections of data that cannot be analysed in a straightforward manner. Something that needs a microscopic understanding of what’s going on, and be able to break down the data in creative ways, and that’s something I am really good at . . . I threw my hat in the ring, did some research, thought about a way how I could build a product that the market was not currently offering, and off I went.’
Aside from his business interests, Galen seems to be politically engaged and an outspoken individual on Twitter.
