Phil Helmuth - Great player or overrated ?

I just witnessed PH performance in the WSOP 2010 ME. Needless to say I was unimpressed and even annoyed when he put down the other player who obviously outplayed him. Any thoughts?

He is an asshat but he is poker's asshat.

Hey, Helmuth may never win another bracelet, but he can still get to a final table. Just look at his results in event #41 of WSOP 2010. Also earlier in the year he made a Bay 101 final table too. He may not be like, but he is still skilled enough to be consider as one of the greats.

He is garbage and he knows it. He is probably acting a lot though, but he is still a tool.

yea i saw him get wrecked tonight also. it was actually embarassing he shows up late and in a boxers robe. he needs to stop worrying about outside stuff and just play poker.

Garbage? I guess they let garbage poker players in the poker hall of fame, that makes sense. And there is probably a lot of garbage poker players with 11 bracelets.

He is a tool? AGREED.

Is it awesome to watch any table where he and Matusow are at? YES

I think Phil is a great player he's proven that over a long period of time, but his antics annoy people but it is also good television.

As much as I dislike Phil's personality he is without a doubt one of the greatest tournament players.

guy is a poker tournament immortal lolo

pay attention to his results, and not the side show.

hes great for poker, like an earlier poster wrote. because 1 way or the other ppl start to care about poker because of his nonsense at the table.

i tune in sometimes just to see what he does, but i havent watched poker on tv in awhile.

hes great for poker, whether u like him or not.

it is sooo sad he represents that awful online poker site. those ub costumes that he shows up to the ME are stupid. boxer outfit this yr? ugh.

I agree with everyone who says he is great TV, no doubt. The whining and insults just make more people want to tune in to see what kind of blow up is next. It also makes people want to target him. I agree he is a great NLHE tourney player, but lately he has been less than great, or at least less great than he says he is.
11 bracelets is great, but that took 20 years with smaller, less intelligent fields. The young guns these days will have 40 bracelets in 20 years...

well I am not sure that it is fair to judge his play just on what we see on TV since it is so very edited

however the hands that were shown on TV sure did make him look like a donk.

2 hands in specifically come to mind.

hand #1 he calls a LP raise from the BB with 76o. Now I understand the idea of blind defense but in the very early stages of a huge tourney like that I am not sure this it is a good play.

hand #2 he flats a button raise with JJ in the BB. then check/calls the flop and then checks the turn with no overs and then bets the river once the button hits the nut flush. Then calls the guy the worst player at the table for open raising the button with a suited A. C-bet with the nut flush draw. checked the turn for a free card then raised once he had the nuts. How was this a bad play?

I think Phil Hellmuth is great to watch in both ways, controversy as well as great playing style.

His outbursts are what gives the game a bit of some excitement. Obviously when he goes over the top and keeps on be-rating the player i don't agree with but to watch him blow up over something he wouldn't of played makes excellent television in my opinion. Just like any sort of competitive league there's always one and i think it needs someone like Hellmuth. His results speak for themselves and i do believe he is one of the best past/present.

The persona is *mostly* an act. He's an attention whore, yes, and his persona fulfills that need, but he admits some of it comes from being a sore loser and letting his emotions take over. He's usually very apologetic after he goes off on someone, and has said many times that he wants to curb that negative energy. But I think it's too much a part of him now and he's not been able to control it lately. Witness his near fetal position breakdown when he was sucked out on and eliminated in that WPT event.

Virtually everyone who knows Helmuth personally says that away from the table he's the best friend you could ever want, extremely loyal and will give the shirt off his back to anyone who needs help. You see Mikey giving him grief all the time on TV but the truth is they're best friends. In Mikey's book he speaks very highly of Helmuth as a person and a friend even while insulting his poker abilities.

His cash poker skills are as bad as his tournament skills have been good, but the game has changed a lot since his heyday and although he can still be a force I don't forsee any more bracelets in his future. I have no doubt that players like Ivey and Sidell will break his bracelet record in the next few years. But unlike most other pros (with the exception of the FT founding pros Lederer/Ivey/Ferguson/et al), Helmuth is a marketing juggernaut who clears way more money away from the poker table than any other pro. His endorsements, appearance fees, and investments/business ventures earn him far more than even the biggest poker winnings, so you have to give the guy some credit for being smart. The vast majority of pros can only dream of the success Helmuth has had.

Its going to be virtually impossible for anyone including pros to get more than 10 braclets now. The fields are so large now that even the pros can get knocked out by new players anytime. You are seeing a lot more amature players going deep and not as many pros going real deep.

However, Phil is a good player. 11 bracelets means something. His attitude at the tables is of course annoying, but then again he may be paid to act like that. Its drama, and everybody loves watching drama. Makes for good tv and good ratings and profits for the stations.

Phil Helmuth probably has some redeeming qualities, but none of that excuses the way he verbally berates players who are of lower status than him when they beat him fair and square. That's just being a jerk.

I can tell Phil exactly how to overcome his problem. Make it a point to personally and sincerely apologize to every player he insults right after he does it, and do it in the presence of others and when the cameras are running.

Something about humbly apologizing makes it less likely you'll continue abusing others, and something about excusing yourself from apologizing makes it more likely you'll continue.

I really don't think he cares at this point. He got paid to make his entrance, and he's basically freerolling the Main Event.

The flip side of that is that there are SO MANY MORE events in which you can win a bracelet now. Really hard to compare the different eras.

I like Phil

These entertaining guys are important for poker !
His live results show, that he is one of the best.
I think online he would be not that great, does he play online ?!
I "love" The Hellmouth lol.

God that entrance at this years ME was awful

He's a great player but has to be the most annoying, some of his acts are hilarious but once he start to insult he gets very annoying and makes himself look like an idiot.

The A4 hand v that Carroll guy is pretty hilarious

ur nutty if u dont think this guy will win another bracelet in the next few yrs.

he won bracelets in back to back yrs only a few yrs ago. hes near the top of the most money won list at the wsop, most cashes, most bracelets. . . .it goes on and on.

and u cant go by what he wins or loses at cash games on tv. thats only a small portion and its against the top players in the world sitting all at 1 table. to judge his ability on that sampling isnt right.

It's a good play for a variety of reasons:

1) He's defending his blind like he shouls.
2) He may think he can outplay his opponent after the flop, even out of position
3 and most important) Don't forget they are very deep. 76 is a hand with potential. If he misses, he can easily let his hand go without losing much. If he hits his straight (or maybe a full house), he may get his opponent's whole stack. The implied odds are definitely there.

In deepstack tournaments these kind of hands (preferably suited) are way better than AK.

I'm nutty then. The game has mostly evolved past him, and he's a bit delusional about it. He has skils, and he's had his day in the spotlight, but there's a ton of better players than him now.

Even though it's pretty obvious by his TV play, who said I'm going by TV? It's widely said and written by the people who play with him regularly. He's a cash donk by all accounts, and not just on TV. Even his friends say that. When he walks into a room all the cash grinders and old-timers start salivating uncontrollably.

dmorris.. I actually agree with almost 100% of your first post in this thread (and glad you wrote it so I didn't feel the need to). ie. I have heard many times that Phil H. is a great guy, an awesome family man, etc.

Personally I like him & would think it'd be cool to meet him.

As far as him never winning another WSOP bracelet... I'd have to disagree. Probably not in NLHE obviously (although he did go fairly deep in a SCOOP Event on Stars this year.. was kinda fun watching him) but in some of the other games I think he is still in contention.

^^^ It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility for him to earn another bracelet I suppose, it's just that his game isn't what it used to be, and the game isn't what it used to be back when he was on top of the game. If that makes sense.

And I really don't know about how he'll do in non-NLHE games. He's always been a NLHE tournament specialist. 7 of his 11 bracelets are in NLHE, with 3 in Limit, and 1 in Pot Limit. And you can see from his winnings list how he started out like gangbusters but then seriously slowed down since the poker boom post-2003 which was another watershed moment in the evolution of the game that just left him behind. He's only won 2 since, the last in 2007. I obviously can't say he'll *never* win another bracelet, but I think the odds are much more against him than his successors.

From Wikipedia:

1989 $10,000 No Limit Hold'em World Championship $755,000
1992 $5,000 Limit Hold'em $168,000
1993 $1,500 No Limit Hold'em $161,400
1993 $2,500 No Limit Hold'em $173,000
1993 $5,000 Limit Hold'em $138,000
1997 $3,000 Pot Limit Hold'em $204,000
2001 $2,000 No Limit Hold'em $316,550
2003 $2,500 Limit Hold'em $171,400
2003 $3,000 No Limit Hold'em $410,860
2006 $1,000 No Limit Hold'em with rebuys $631,863
2007 $1,500 No Limit Hold'em $637,254

And in winnings, sure he's 4th all time over the 21 years since his ME win, but look who's ahead of him now in just the past relatively few years:

1st - Phil Ivey
2nd - Daniel Negreanu
3rd - Jamie Gold (LOL, one-hit-wonder and all around pretty bad poker player)

In summary, as much as we love to hate the guy, I give Helmuth credit for his tournament poker skills over the last couple of decades. He also has an uncanny ability to read people and make heroic laydowns. And he's obviously a very charitable and stand-up guy away from the tables. I just think his big winning days are behind him. I'd like to be proven wrong though, as I'm interested in seeing how he would act and how much more his ego would inflate if he were to pull down another ME win.

I could see a call suited although still we want to play this hand in position. The problem with this hand here is that he hit his seven and it cost him a chunk of his stack to an overpair.

In all since of thought i agree with dm on this but what that post don't show is how good he is in his business savvy.Besides a few poker players that were smart enough to get on the online game.Phil Hellmuth as to be his own greatest asset.He new when the game went big to make is name known to anybody who plays poker as a given.Which he did and i respect him for that aspect of his knowledge.But has for the poker yes he still thinks it's the 90's an he is the only one that knows how to play the game.In reality he is far far behind all these new players an i for one think he knows it his self.
Thanks,Joe

In football if you win a world trophy you are immediately a legend.

In darts you are a great player. Phil Taylor has won countless world championships. Why should poker be any different?

^WTF are talking about.

morris u type: The game has mostly evolved past him (helmuth), and he's a bit delusional about it. He has skils, and he's had his day in the spotlight, but there's a ton of better players than him now.

ur craaaaazy, lolololo. im not a helmuth fan but to say the game has evolved past him is . . . . . . . .lololol look at what hes done in the last few yrs.

http://www.wsop.com/players/playerpr...p?playerID=271

the guy beat the old schoolers with their tight game 20 yrs ago and is still beating the new kids with their aggressive game today.

not only has he had multiple cashes in wsop events every yr recently, but strong finishes out of monster crowds. u compare him to ivey and negreanu try to play him down. i dont see the weakness or the "game evolving past him" like some of the other old school players from his results.

look if u dont like him, just say u dont and forget it. no reason to detract from his skill. the spotlight is still on him not only for his nonsense but every1 knows hes still an awesome player. yeah there are a few ppl probably better than him in wsop tourns. . . . a few ... . . like a hand full lololololololololol

40 bracelets in 20 years? Yeah, I don't think so, maybe 3 at most. Too many good players now

Isn't it obvious? He's saying that in any other competition, the amount of trophies you win determines your reputation. The problem with his analogy is that it doesn't really work. Just because someone/some team won competitions 20, 30 years ago and were great then, doesn't mean they're/they would be great now. Phil might have been a great tournament player like 20 years ago, but he's not one of the best in the world right now, just like a football team who titles 30/40 years ago might not succeed in today's game

Oh fwiw, I'm talking about football as in soccer

Edit - I explained that really bad but whatever, it's readable. Just.
Cliffs - Phil used to be great, now he isn't. This is based on no experience of playing with him whatsoever

the guy has made a final table at the wsop every yr since 1988, except for 2009 where he still had 14th and 17th finish placings. lololololol

i kinda like his odds of winning 1 more bracelet.


i have no idea how u ppl could say he doesnt "have it anymore"?