Chris Ferguson
American poker player
Christopher Philip Ferguson (born April 11, 1963) is an American retired professional poker player. He has won six World Series of Poker events, including the 2000 WSOP Main Event, and the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Ferguson is a computer scientist by training and education.
On September 20, 2011, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion to amend a civil complaint, with the belief that Ferguson and three other directors for the popular poker client Full Tilt Poker were running a Ponzi scheme that paid out $444 million of customer money to themselves and the firm's owners.
Early life and education
Ferguson was born in Los Angeles, California. Both Ferguson's parents have doctoral degrees in mathematics and his father, Thomas S. Ferguson, teaches game theory and theoretical probability at UCLA.
Ferguson attended UCLA, where he earned a Ph.D. in computer science (focusing on virtual network algorithms) in 1999 after five years as an undergraduate and 13 years as a graduate student. His Ph.D. advisor was Leonard Kleinrock. While at UCLA Ferguson appeared on the Ricky Jay Television Special "Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women" as an assistant.
Poker career
Ferguson began playing poker at the age of 10. In college, he honed his skill on IRC poker playing online for play money in chat rooms.
The public source identifies “Chris Ferguson” as american poker player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chris, Ferguson and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q444900. VIAF identifies the subject as 59403480. The Library of Congress control number is n2007023921. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 2000, 2008 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chris Ferguson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.