Poker Articles

Poker Legend Profile:
Phil Hellmuth, Jr.
By Andy Glazer

Editor’s Note: We chose this article to kick-off "Andy Glazer Remembered". We thought it only fitting that since Andy’s friend and WSOP Champion, Phil Hellmuth wrote the introduction for this series( found here), that we should feature Glazer’s thoughts on Hellmuth. I suspect that only the number of WSOP bracelets have changed since he wrote this piece, as Glazer’s assessments seem to prove timeless.

Welcome to the first in what will be a regular feature I'll be writing here on Poker Pages: on the 20th of each month, you'll find a new biographical article about the world's most famous and interesting poker players. I'm starting with the one I know the most about, my friend Phil Hellmuth, Jr.

The hard poker data on Hellmuth is difficult to ignore, even for Hellmuth-haters:

1. He still holds the record for being the youngest player ever to win the Big One at the World Series of Poker (in 1989, when he was 24).

2. He's one of only two players (Ted Forrest is the other) to win three WSOP bracelets in the same year. (Unbelievably, Forrest won his three the same year, 1993, and Hellmuth also had a second place finish in that Series)

3. He's tied for second place on the all-time bracelet list with six (Johnny Chan caught him this year), two behind all-time leader Doyle Brunson, who started winning WSOP bracelets when Hellmuth was still a child in Madison, Wisconsin. This makes Hellmuth one of the very few players ever to win more than a million dollars at the WSOP without counting money won in the Championship Event.

4. Four titles from the Hall of Fame, including the 1995 Championship.

5. More recently, the Pot Limit Hold'em title at the 2000 World Poker Open in Tunica.

I could keep listing tournament wins, seconds, and thirds, but then there wouldn't be any room for the more interesting stuff. Why, after all, does a category called "Hellmuth-haters" even exist? Why did I select (and nominate with some trepidation, only to discover that he liked it) the title "Poker Brat" for the autobiography we're working on? And why, if there are "Hellmuth-haters" and if Poker Brat is a suitable sobriquet, does he have so many fiercely loyal friends, including yours truly?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, move over. If you think YOU have more than one persona, you should meet Phil Hellmuth. So let's do that.

The Haters tend to focus on his table demeanor. Hellmuth is a self-admitted whiner when things don't go his way, and he tends to berate opponents for making plays he feels inferior (especially if the inferior play results in a Hellmuth defeat). His 6'6" size and lofty reputation often intimidate before he says a word, and when Hellmuth launches into one of his withering dissections of an opponent's play, he makes few friends.

Hellmuth claims, in very convincing fashion, that these outbursts are not calculated to unnerve his opponents. He usually expresses regret and apologizes to those involved after he has cooled down.

"I feel bad about the outbursts after they happen," he says, "and I have been working on understanding where all that comes from so I can get rid of it, but I'm not there yet. I guess it's pretty easy to see what happened, in hindsight. I was a socially awkward kid, thanks in part to bad warts on my hands. I hid my hands whenever possible, including a weird way of positioning them for writing." Even today, with the warts long gone, Hellmuth's handwriting and handwriting style both seem almost primitive.

"The warts finally went away, only to be followed by a really bad case of the zits," Hellmuth continues. "I really didn't have many friends or much of a social life. So when I finally achieved some success, my ego overcompensated."

Hellmuth entered the University of Wisconsin after high school, but his attention soon wandered.

"I discovered these no-limit poker games at the student union," he explains. "I lost my first two times playing, but I won big the third time and pretty much crushed the game regularly after that." After his sophomore year, he told his parents he was dropping out of school to become a professional poker player, a tough announcement in a family where academic achievement was highly prized.

Hellmuth took off for Las Vegas with $15,000 in poker earnings in his pocket, and immediately sat down in a 150-300 Razz game. Actor Telly Savalas was also playing in the game, but that isn't as significant to poker historians as the fact that Hellmuth had never played Razz before!

"It seemed like a simple game," Hellmuth says. "Just 7-card stud played for low, instead of for high." Hellmuth played for 70 consecutive hours before he quit, down $2,800, to get some sleep.

"I was pretty lucky to escape with that small a loss," he says. "Especially playing 70 hours straight. The problem was, in Madison, I had no experience quitting a game. I had always played until everyone else quit. A poker game that never ended was new territory."

Over the course of the next year, Hellmuth traveled back and forth between Las Vegas and Madison several times, and eventually went broke, but he re-built his bankroll in Midwestern games, and soon started returning to Las Vegas, where each of his first two World Series Championship Event appearances ended with confrontations with Johnny Chan. The first came in the 1988 Big One, where Chan knocked Hellmuth out in 33rd place; Hellmuth was so new to big time poker that year that two days before the Big One he did not know what a satellite tournament was. Someone told him about one, and he won his way in, only to be knocked out by the defending champion Chan-whom Hellmuth did not even recognize. When Hellmuth returned in 1989, the tournament came down to him and Chan, who was now the two-time defending champ. Hellmuth's two nines finished off Chan's A-7 suited in the decisive pot.

Pretty good work for someone who had never read a single poker book, and who still professes never to have read one.

"I'm the best Hold 'em player in the world," Hellmuth says. "Why would I want to read a book by someone who knows less than me, it might throw me off."

If you're someone who's put off by self-confidence, you are probably not going to like Phil Hellmuth. So why, if he is frequently an ill-mannered and brash opponent, does Hellmuth enjoy the robust support of so many of his poker brethren?

"Phil might act up once in a while," fellow poker legend John Bonetti says, "but there is no more highly principled man in poker, and no more generous one. I have seen him lend money to dozens of players who really needed it. His word is better than any legal contract. When I was sick in 1998, he called me practically every day. So when it comes to the important things in life, character and honesty and friendship and family, Phil Hellmuth is a prince. He's just a prince who behaves badly when it comes to things that aren't so important. He needs to grow up a little. He's still young."

Watching Hellmuth interact with his family in their San Francisco Bay area home, it's hard to imagine this is the same guy who can reduce an opponent to smoldering rubble with an outburst about a poorly played hand. His sons Phillip (age 9) and Nick (age 7) are the constant focus of Dad's loving attention. Dad also doubles as their biggest soccer fan (he frequently flies home in the middle of tournaments to attend their games).

Even the answering machine message that greets callers to the Hellmuth home features a playful father-son interaction. Perhaps it's partly to make up for the time he must be away from home pursuing his profession, but it's hard to imagine a more loving, attentive father.

The same is true for Hellmuth's relationship with his wife Kathy, an attractive psychiatrist who works for a university in the Bay area (which is why Hellmuth chooses to live there instead of Los Angeles or Las Vegas, and must commute to "the office"). He's never been unfaithful, and he certainly does not lack for opportunity; he travels a lot, and the kid with the warts grew into a handsome man. He speaks openly of how important she is to him, and it doesn't matter how many "tough guy" poker associates are around when he does it.

So who is the real Phil Hellmuth? Is he an arrogant, loud-mouthed jerk, or is he a friend who's there when his friends need him, and a fiercely devoted family man? Obviously there are elements of each, but John Bonetti got it right when he called Hellmuth "A prince who behaves badly when it comes to things that aren't so important."

The Hellmuth haters judge from brief interactions, rumor, innuendo, and envy. The Hellmuth admirers have spent a lot of time around the man. Do the math… and after you've figured out which side is more important, hope that if you find yourself amongst the last two players in a big no-limit tournament, he's not the guy sitting in the other chair.

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