The Scoop -- Phil Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth’s accomplishments are unrivaled. He holds the record for most World Series of Poker bracelets won, 11, and has more than $10.5 million in lifetime tournament winnings, but despite his illustrious career, he attracts critics. Hellmuth recently sat down with Adam and Diego to talk about his career, his life away from the tables, and what he thinks of the criticism he gets.

Diego Cordovez: Adam and I have talked about your game, which is that a lot of the old-school Phil who won 11 bracelets and a lot of tournaments is, as you describe, low risk, finding spots, and getting chips without exposing yourself, and that’s a strategy that works a lot better against weak players rather than strong players. Part of the evolution in poker is not just that there are more aggressive players, which probably feeds into you because they’re overaggressive, but that there are also more experienced players, so one view would be that your tactics are going to be a lot less effective because instead of there being five of these guys at a table, there’s only one or two of them now. The better or stronger players are not susceptible to that strategy, and you’ve been so vocal about the way you play that they are looking to exploit you.

Phil Hellmuth: It’s kind of funny to me that my critics — whoever they are, and I have a lot of them — will say, “Phil’s good against only weak players,” but they forget that I won my first nine bracelets against the greatest players. I just kind of laugh at that. Then, of course, I’m crushing while I’m playing with all these great players on Poker After Dark. I think my record has been a first, a second, a first, a second, a third, a first. I mean, that’s just the last six I’ve played in; it’s crazy.

Adam Schoenfeld: Let me just play devil’s advocate to that. Poker After Dark is a single-table satellite or cash game. The modern World Series of Poker main event and all the hold’em events, except for the $40,000, have giant fields that you have to go through for days and days, and now there are hundreds of these really good kids we don’t even know, and your style may not be as effective against those guys as it is at a table where you know everyone or they are old-school guys.

PH: But now you’ve criticized the fact that, allegedly, I can’t play weak players.

AS: No, I didn’t.

PH: No, but then people say I’ve crushed the strong players for years, so, obviously, I’ve crushed strong, great players and I’ve crushed weak players for years. Look, in the main event the last two years, it’s not what I wanted, but I finished 45th out of 7,000 players and then I made the money this year. And if I wouldn’t have donked it off on day … I mean, there was 15 minutes left when I went out on day 4 with pocket aces, by the way, and I was gambling that hand, and I don’t regret it.

DC: I think I was following online, and the aces hand, that’s one that I liked the way you played it. At that point, you were lower in chips, you were slow-playing …

PH: I was gambling.

DC: Yeah. What hurt you earlier was when you were involved in a hand when two jacks came on the flop, and you were up against a player who had A-J. He wasn’t a real sophisticated player.

PH: He was aggressive, though.

DC: He was aggressive and probably tricky, but that’s the one that hurt you.
PH: I made a 100,000 [chip] call on the river with that hand. I reraised him before the flop with nines. I don’t like the way I played that hand. But if you want to criticize me, jeez, I took 7-6 offsuit in the first three or four hands and called a raise from the button and a huge reraise from the big blind. He had aces. It came 10-8-2. I called 50,000 to try to hit a gutshot. The 8 paired and he checked behind me. A queen came on the river and I bluffed 80,000 with 7 high, which he snap-called with aces. That frickin’ new-school, super-fast Phil. I mean, I had 500,000 after day 3. Old-school Phil would have made it through day 5 like 80 percent of the time.

AS: Right, you could have rolled into day 5.

PH: I could have rolled …

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