blonde poker forum

All round Prat, but a bloody good player, first to 11 bracelets, beating 2500+ players is some accomplishment!

Well played Hellmuth, a great achievement and surely more to come in the future

Amazing accomplishment.

nh phil.

Respect - even if it is through gritted teeth.
(Plus I  never picked him for my fantasy team)

Out of interest who has the best ratio of wins vs events entered? My guess it could be someone like Allen Cunningham - a poker players player.

Sensational achievement clearly

WOW he did it, he will have bragging rights now, how funny.

Night of the luckboxes, clearly.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=24505.60 (http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=24505.60)

Great player, great poker mind.

Prize plonker.

Congratulationaments on the 11th bracelet.  It'll be worth its weight in publicity and endorsements.

He is a rude git for reasons that I will not post here

how much of the table antics are "contrived" by someone aware of their possible impact on opponents, is is he a real idiot?

I look back at McEnroe, for example, and the vast majority of the antics were for show, or if not to pysche himself up.

Now McEnroe is lauded and much missed in an era of robots, personality wise

History will presumably look kinder on Hellmuth than contemporary analysis of his character suggests....?

Well done.  He is the best character in poker,  anything I have ever seen or read about him, he comes across like a spoilt brat. Deep down I think he is a realy good bloke.  Some of the other mouths are actually real life prats and you can just tell they actually believe the are Gods gift to poker by treating the other players like crap. I think with Hellmuth, it is all an act.  He even admits this himself

He may or may not be an arsehole but that does not make him a better or a worse player.

Weher you like him or not you can't argue with 11 bracelets.

Although am I correct in saying that all his bracelets have been won in Hold em events?

class player-great achievement and personally i thibk hes fantastic.

love em or hate then poker needs characters like phil helmuth, tony gee and ....................Tikay  rotflmfao

I believe so.

I interviewed Hellmuth last month, within about a minute and without me actually asking him anything remotely related to it he managed to get this into the conversation:

"Well Barry, as you know I am the greatest No Limit Hold'em player of all time"

He was actually a very nice guy though and I was actually delighted with the result.

Don't mind his table antics one bit.  In fact, I find them quite endearing at times.  It's away from the table where his behaviour is suspect (IMHO). 

Agreed. Love his table talk and antics that goes on. Guy is a legend.

this makes me happy. but only because he's in my fantasy team. the bloke's a *******.







eeek, nasty word deleted

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!

 no doubt a complex character , good job he is married to a psychiatrist , he is without doubt though a great player.

 sometimes acts a bit like a spoilt brat but he is one of my favourite players

I watched about the first two hours of this final table, before my internet went down and Hellmuth was in complete control. The only person who was going to trouble him was Scott Clements, once he'd gone it was all over.

As an aside, I too have had the pleasure of interviewing Phil and have to say it was an experience i'll never forget. It took place on the outside of his penthouse suite in Aruba (obv a brag post, a few journos had been flown out to cover the event) and like Barry said he was fond of reminding you how good he was, going as far to say that he felt he wasn't using all his powers (so he donated a bunch of money to charity) and that if he used all his powers it'd be unfair lol. But, he was also very respectful of other players. I asked him who else he thought would get to 10 bracelets and he mentioned: Seidel, Ivey and Cunnigham as the three he thought would go double figures. Phil also quoted 24 as the number he'd like to win.

The UB reps managed to get us jobsworths invited to Phil's penthouse party - the only drink Don P obv - we arrive about 11pm and expect the place to be rocking, instead there are a handful of people sitting about, the main event at this party is a serious game of Trivial Pursuit between Annie Duke and friends and PokerHo and friends - who btw do not know what the capital of Belguim is - it really was a lol moment at how dead this supposed party was. Say what you like about annoying american internet players but at least they know how to party (edit: drink) - see here: http://tinyurl.com/23zgrg

You also have to remember that he can tell if you're bluffing like he's reading your mind.  Remember on that Channel 4 documentary £50 says You’ll Watch This, when he got 5 out of 10 of Hardeep's statements correct.  Almost telepathic.

Helmuth's been acting the clown for years! Obviously part of it is his character, but he has caricatured himself out of all proportion for self promotion reasons and done it superbly. He's pretty much the first name every TV show wants on their poker show playing their big freerolls now, his extra-curricular poker interests have been really successful, he's marketed himself superbly and people still take him 100% seriously when he's largely pissing around with his antics now.

Above all though, he's one of the best tournament players of all time, consistent over a long period, and will go down in history as a great. I admit Helmuth's snotty arrogance got on my nerves the first time i saw him on tv on LNP, but over the years I've come to think the guy is brilliant at manipulating people and can read tournament poker hands like few others.

Great for poker he takes down no 11.

 ;tightend;

And those results in full...

http://www.blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/10384 (http://www.blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/10384)

Has he ever won a bracelet in a poker game other than hold em? That would be the mark of a legend IMHO

No, All 11 have been in HE

Still a fantastic achievment

He's a one trick pony but its some trick  :)

Sums it up, the best holdem tournament player

Cracking result, but still cant stand the bloke.

He is a flash in the pan
the word legend is used too easily these days
wait till he has been winning comps all over the world for years and years before we describe him as a legend

Is it not harder to win no limit holdem bracelets as it attracts more numbers than the other forms of poker?

McEnroe's rather excellent Biography "Serious" suggests his "antics" when playing were simply that he could not control his emotions. He recognizes now though, what a pratt he made himself look, & how in fact it harmed his game.

He's mellowed wonderfully though, & has become a true "elder Statesman" of Tennis, and is a simply majestic commentator. It's worth watching Wimbledon on the Beeb just to listen to him.

Strange how some folks become more popular after their main career has finished. Lady Thatcher, ex-President Carter, John Major, etc.

James, (well anybody for that matter), do you have a link to video of final table that doesn't use the pokerlisting.com site, (for some reason my PC goes all girly and doesn't behave at that site).

Cheers,
Feesh

11 bracelets over 18 years isn't good enough for you?

Bear in mind that the bracelets for events other than the Main Event didn't have the same cachet back then. The other top players used to mock Hellmuth for breaking his neck to win as many bracelets as he could - they preferred to play in the juicy side games as they'd make more money (the side events did not have huge prize pools back then). So the fields were smaller and softer.

But the first one was the main event wasn't it?
and now he's still winning against a huge field - so 18 years - not really  a flash in the pan?

AndrewT /= 77dave

Did you think i was serious in my post

i think hellmuth is in the top5 holdem tourny players of all time

because of his manner at the table he gets a lot of stick but at the end of the day results speak for themselves
ok he has entered a lot of comps but holding the record for most bracelets most cashes and im sure by the end of this series will have the record for the most final tables

I totally agree with Jim here, even if he was joking!

How someone can call Phil a legend, then use the same word to describe someone like Stu Ungar is beyond me.

is living legend a better  epitaph than??

Surely Hellmuth is better than Unger.  He plays against thousands of good players each WSOP.  Even in 1997, the fields were much smaller and there were less top players.  Even a guy who has been playing online for a few months can go to the WSOP now and not embarrass himself/herself now.  I doubt when Unger was at his peak he faced many players who he had no knowledge of,  Hellmuth has to do this every WSOP.  Doesn't this make him a better player as he is forced to adapt to various players each year. 

You should watch the poker documentry on Unger on PokerTube, I have no doubt he was the best ever after watching that. His % of wins in big tourneys will never be matched. Even though the numbers were lower then, you get alot more fish these days.

But back then, very few players were fully aware of the difference between tournament poker and cash game poker. Simple aggression would have provided such an advantage back then because so many players would let themselves get blinded away to nothing.

it's stupid trying to measure whos the top dog by anything other than success!

Is negreanu better than ivey?

brunson better than chan?

bloom better than vaswani?

It's too difficult to say, all you can do is look at what they've won/achieved and in that respect hellmuth is the top boy now.

In tournaments with large fields, even if the best player is twice as good as everyone else in the field he's still not likely to win it.  A lot of luck involved, and the bigger the field, the more luck is required.

I disagree, surely the resources there are now for players, means they become better players in a much shorter period of time. Maybe not world class, but at least knowledgable (Sp?) on the fundamentals.

Im not saying stu unger wasnt the best but its very hard to say he is as his premature departure from this world put a spanner in the works on being able to judge that.
Arguably he is the most naturally skilled poker player there ever has been but hellmuth actually as the bracelets to back his ability up!

Hellmuth is my fav poker player, the guy cracks me up every time.

lol Unger ran hot. Sample size is so small! And he was playing at a time when people had no idea what they were doing, Phil on the other hand has been on top of the game for years, whilst coming up against truly tough fields.

Agree totally. Unger's first world title was only his second hold'em tournament in his life. Fact is, back then not many understood tournament hold'em like fields do today.

Unger is a bit of an unknown quantity to be honest. To say he is/was better than Hellmuth is pure speculation.

Anyone know how many WSOP Bracelet Events Hellmuth has played?

You can't really compare 20 years ago and dismiss a players achievements by saying people didn't know what they were doing then, its all relative.

Any person who stands out in any given era means there a special player.

I don't think anyone can dismiss Ungar's achievements. I think you can compare though. Would you rather have 5 bracelets from the 80's or 3 from the 21st century?

For me Hellmuth has surpassed Ungar.

poker used to be out earning money, winning money, turning a profit, making a living, i'd opt for the latter in your question but only because of the monetary differential.

i'd sell the bracelets afterwards as well, who gives a shit, whos going to walk around wearing one of those things, as a piece of jewellery they look shit and everyone knows you one the tourney.

I think the only person i have seen who they suit is raymer, dont know why!

I don't know how many,but he plays a lot of them every year.
I read an article about a year ago on the subject of the number he played,i cant remember who it was by,possibly Johnny Chan.

If all of Hellmuth's bracelets are for NLHE am i right in saying that Ivey has NO bracelets in NLHE?

yeh it was johnny chan, think he was saying imagine how many bracelets i could have won if i played just about every event like hellmuth!

Yeah that was the one.

Has he got a point?

i have no idea how many wsop events he has bought into but he has cashed a record 58 times

so no matter how many events he has played cashing 58 times is a very impressive feat especially in going to to win 11 times
i also believe he is 2nd in all time final table apperances

Yes, you've got to be in it to win it.

well, yes as kin says you cant win unless you enter but i dont think johnny can say i would have been on 15 bracelets by now if i had played just about every single one! You have to prove it, not hypothesise!

I wonder who has played the most events and never won one?

Stu Ungar won it in 1980 (the first year he entered it), 1981, then ruined his life through cocaine and massive sport bet losses. He entered sporadically over the years, usually off his head on charlie, and came back to win it in 1997 because his daughter Stephanie told him jokingly, she'd never speak to him if he didn't get himself straight. Billy Baxter had to buy him in, because he was dead broke.

Incidentally, Hellmuth was commentating on that final table (featuring none other than Mel Judah), and he said one of the reasons Ungar had so many chips was because he kept reading hellmuth like a book and calling his bluffs. Phil Hellmuth was in awe of Stu Ungar that day, and rightly so. He said, and I quote, "This is a battle for second place".

As you all probably know, NLHE was becoming massive in Vegas in the early 80's, and although the field was obviously much, much smaller than the crapshoot of todays main event, it was stock full of hardened proffesionals who played day-in day-out at places like Binions Horseshoe. You wouldnt cough up $10,000 if you weren't a confident player. To say otherwise is a bit naive.

I see the word "legend" not just as denoting ability, which I think both Ungar and Hellmuth have in droves, maybe on an equal pegging, maybe not, but we'll never know. It speaks of something else. It's also about legacy, triumph over adversity and setting precedents.

In my job, I get to meet a lot of famous poker players, some that played with Stu Ungar back in the 80's, like the afrementioned Mel Judah. I asked Mel one day what it was like playing against him on that final table outside Binions Horseshoe on Fremont Street and he spoke in kind of hushed tones about the man.

He said "I cant figure out, to this day, how that man played poker like he did... It was spooky, it was un-natural"

Good post but do you not think people are made immortal after their death? Or as tikay said the other day... are remembered far more kindly after their career is over?

If Hellmuth died tragically tomorrow would people talk about how spookily good he was? Some players already do, Scotty Nguyen for starters.

Every documentary or book about Ungar is filled with content by friends of his such as Baxter and Sexton. I'd love to hear what others think of him. I doubt anything negative will ever be said about his game though becuase we tend not to trample on people's graves.

An example of a World Champion who isn't actually that good at poker according to some is Amarillo Slim. Won it in '72, but I've read quite a few times how people like Johnny Chan are happy to sit down with him at a poker table all day. I'm not saying Ungar is no good at poker by any stretch but his era was vastly different.

I'd like to see how he gets on against massive fields who from top to bottom know what inflection points are and what an M is. Perhaps without his lifestyle he would have adapted as well as or better than Hellmtuh, Chan and Brunson.

However he did have the lifestyle and he did have the issues. Natural talent (and he had bags of it) alone probably wouldn't have worked today. Someone like Hellmuth who has had to adapt his game and worked hard in the face of the changing WSOP is a true legend. I don't care how many events he's bought into.

a sign of a true champion is 1 that can change with the times and still be a champion,and i beleive hellmuth is 1 of the very few to have done this,so for me the guy is  a legend.

good post now you will have to define what you mean by unflection point and M.

I can guess what an inflection point in a tournament is but have no idea re M!

I am Try to learning something new each week - last week was rough definition of a cooler and this week
ratholing.

M = your stack size divided by size of BB + SB + ante. Popularised by Harrington, though he didn't come up with it.

More about M here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-ratio


Mine is often approximately 0.6

Kev's before his diet was always = 3.14159

Love this thread.


Unger is the Jimmy Dean of poker.  Live fast die young.  There as also conspiracy theories about his death floating about out there still.  I think it is unarguable that he was a genius, and as such will never be overtaken in his greatness.

But Hellmuth is something different again.  The way I understand it, Phil's driving force has always been that he wants to be seen as the best.  He wasn't a great achiever as a youngster, and isn't naturally self confidant.  When he found he had a poker skill, he wanted to use it so he would be remembered in history.  That's why he wants the bracelets.  The bracelets sell the brand that is Hellmuth.  He makes most of his money from the media and the media pushes Hellmuth.

If you look at him from this viewpoint, he is undeniably the most successful player out there.

When I first started reading about poker I despised his tantrums.  But he is similar to McEnroe.  He gets angry with fate when it lets him down, and he despises himself when he makes an unforced error.  These are just signs of the depth of his need.  He NEEDS to be the greatest poker player in history, even if it's only in his own mind.

His achievement will not be easily matched, because most people aren't that driven.

What I think entitles Hellmuth to the acolades is his thinking about the game.  Whilst the modern trend is to become more & more aggressive, win a few 50 /50s , then play with a big stack, Hellmuth seems to me to be almost obsessive with his desire to protect his tournament life, and build his stack slowly, taking as few risks as possible.

Look at Negreanu, he can manipulate a big stack as well as anyone, and he can read players as well as anyone.  But he doesn't have Hellmuth's drive to be number one.  If he loses a tourney, he'll go & win a few thou at a cash game.

Hellmuth WILL go down as one of the greats.  His brand will insist on it.

From what I've read, he might leave behind another legacy.

Very true.

He may not be the greatest poker player ever, but he's certainly in the running for world's worst babysitter.

I'm sorry I mentioned him.  I don't want to ruin a great thread, so I've edited my original post. 

It would be a shame if this thread went too far down that path.

I only mentioned him as the original media hound, and as such, a forerunner to Hellmuth.

I don't think you've ruined the thread.  Don't worry about it.


A question about Hellmuth's antics at the table (and probably more so from other players like Tony G).  When they go off on one at a particular player, is it a ploy to make an impression to the rest of the players at the table.

For example, if someone busts out after an error, and then they get the rubdown - is it to say to the rest of the table "you should be wary of crossing me, as I'll put you in your place, and it won't be pretty if you make a mistake against me", rather than them necessarily trying to say anything to the player who's just gone out?  Effectively just trying to influence the play of the rest of the players still at the table and make them deviate from their 'A-game'?

In the case of Tony G, that kite don't fly. He was Heads-Up with Sunar in Paris & was still giving him the full works.

Hellmouth in the prem league vs Devilfish,

got totally pwned but sucked out a number of times. Very funny.

Thanks - wow I can now baffle our Chief Scientist and CTO with some terminology they have no idea about.
I Used Mr Harrington's theory playing Mansion today and got in the money using the guidelines - got rivered so would have been
up to 13th if the double up worked. Watch out the Main Event.

I don't know about too much about Tony G, I think his verbal is definately deliberate, and controlled, and I think he believes he benefits from it, so good luck to him.

And I think Hellmuth sometimes tries verbals as a weapon, but I think it shows as being a bit contrived, and as such is a waste of time.  But there are other times when it's pure angst.  It doesn't affect the other players, but it takes away from his own game ( very McEnroesque if there is such a word ).  It seems to me more like a wolf howling at the moon.  He's just got to do it.

I don't know anything about his childhood, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was belittled a lot.  The Lehderer kids seem very balanced in their place on this earth.  They each know they are brilliant, and aren't jealous of the others talents & success.

I get the impression that Hellmuth didn't have the same kind of support as a youngster, or at least doesn't believe he had that kind of support.  And now he's found a skill, he wants to rub everyone's nose in it.  I don't think he loves poker for it's own sake, it's how he can use it to get what he needs.  If he was talented in another way, it wouldn't bother him.  It's the accolades he wants.

Unlike Unger.  He seems to have loved cards and the magic he could weave with them.  But he was weak in other, more obvious, ways

I have no justification for believing this btw, so if I'm wrong, don't be afaid to put me right.

I don't think Tony G's antics are "contrived" in quite that sense, I think he gets caught up in the moment and loses control a bit, but I think he knows the effects well enough on other players that he doesn't try to control it, he knows it's a game in the long run but while he's playing it's just pure impulse.

Hellmuth on the other hand, like Muahahaha said, seems more desperate to prove he is the best, this is what he is good at in life and he doesn't want anyone else taking that away from him, he wants the accolades for his talent. Having said that, I think it's a perfectly acceptable way of doing things and he is obviously a brilliant player, nowt wrong with being passionate even if it's not directly related to "love of the game".

I believe Hellmuth has quite a priveleged upper middle class upbringing, i think both his parents are successful people in an academic and professional way (something like doctors, university lecturers type thing). So he probably has issues with proving himself to people as alot was expected of him as a child. Didn't he drop out of university to play poker.

As for unger, he was genius when it came to cards. It wasn't just poker that he was great at, it was all card games as is oft mentioned, he is undoubtly the greatest gin rummy player ever to live. He had whole multitude of personal problems though gambling and drug addictions, which stopped he fulfilling his full potential. I think stuey is still the greatest NLHE tourney player ever to live but sadly he never lived to prove it.