I am a massive hellmuth critic but it's absurd that you trolls are mocking him that much.

If he was completely terrible, he would not be in the lead with the most bracelets since the poker boom. Is he the best NLHE tournament player when it comes to tough fields? God no. There is a reason you don't see him playing High Roller events or EPTs. Is he good at beating up on amateur players? Yes, he is one of the best if not THE BEST. Is he a super donk against decent to great players? No.

Could he beat online games? What levels are we talking about? What format? Could he beat 1-5k NL HU/6max/9max? No. Could he beat 100-400NL? Probably to yes. Could he beat 50NL or less? A resounding yes. Also, there are more games than just NLHE. I will take hellmuth over 95% of this forum when you add in other games than just NLHE.

Also, you people are not realizing the main fact that Hellmuth DOES NOT need to play online, EVER. Why would he need to? It wouldn't be for monetary concerns. He is playing in games 99.999% of this forum wishes they could play in. Hellmuth is not just a person but he is a celebrity and a brand when it comes to poker. Contrary to what you people believe, but being a good poker player DOES NOT involve just being good at poker. Hellmuth is one of the best because he has put himself out there and made himself more than a poker player.

Hate him or love him, when Hellmuth plays poker, YOU WATCH IT. How many other players can you say that for? 10 others? 20 others?

This

Not this.
I don't play anymore but a couple months ago (highest stakes on PS.fr are 5/10€ in NLHE - 10/20 in PLO - and the highest stake on NLHE on winamax are 10/20€) many regs (if they don't have interesting tables on .com i guess) regularly played 2/4 (there is no 3/6 on PS.fr) instead of their 5/10 tables.
Thus 2/4 regs also reguarly played 1/2.

And players on .fr are (a bit) weaker than regs at same stakes (but rake is higher on .fr) but i can say than these guys are way better than Phil Hellmuth at 6max 100+BB deep poker.
So with .com regs that are better, i can say that PH would get absolutely destroyed by 2/4 .com regs and would get crushed by a fair margin by 0.5/1 regs.

Sure online you may be right , no offense but onlines for data analysts. Hellmuth could read their souls and twist their minds with his table chit chat till the'd be crying for the comfort of their large screens and huds etc so they could crunch data in the safe haven of their living room in their pajamas.

When he won the WSOPE Main he was playing LIKE A BEAST!!! But yea I wonder how well he does in the live games. Saw him insta stack off with TPTK on Poker After Dark. It was awful lol

Actually, as the video a few posts ago perfectly illustrates, phil often embarrasses himself and everyone around with his child like tantrums, and I find this very hard to watch, and I usually change the channel/ffwd to avoid having to watch him.

I've always wanted to find footage of Hellmuth stacking off to Carlos Mortensen with QT<QJ on a Q-high flop in the 2001 Main Event, then overdub the whole "queen-ten" tirade from this video.

Yeah, gotta mostly agree with this.

I don't hate Hellmuth overall, and I fall in between on the GOAT vs. WOAT spectrum when it comes to his play. If he goes on his little hissyfits in a setting full of fellow pros (e.g. Poker After Dark), I don't mind because the other players tend to get the last laugh.

But when he does his grandstanding tantrums or ESPECIALLY when he berates dealers for the way the cards run out (both of which we see in the video clip above), it makes me wish I was tall enough to punch him squarely in the brain.

he seems to be happy and well off in live

Hellmuth is capable of making aggressive calls...

You mean most bracelet event entries, right? Ivey has the most bracelets over the stated period.

Hellmuth knows his sweet spots and sticks to them, but whatever angle you come from, some aspects of his results are incredible. I posted this in another conversation, where he was getting the usual "variance" remarks.

I dislike the guy - his smugness and petulance are hard to take, but ...

Just looking at his ability to reach heads-up once he has made the money, I built a spreadsheet to calculate binomial distributions, and the expected number of times he would make heads-up if all players who cash had equal chances.

From Hendon stats for US WSOP cashes (there were 95 listed on Hendon when I ran this), and taking account of field sizes, some of the probabilities are:

P(makes heads up 5 times or more) ~ 1/14
P(makes heads up 6 times or more) ~ 1/53
P(makes heads up 7 times or more) ~ 1/294
P(makes heads up 8 times or more) ~ 1/2500
P(makes heads up 9 times or more) ~ 1/47000
etc, etc.

Hellmuth reached heads-up 22 times out of the 95 that I counted, which is quite astonishing, so far beyond any possible "variance" explanation it makes such suggestions a joke. This is all leaving out the difficulty of making it to the cash.

I think he should get some credit for stamina as well, given the number of events he plays. I have not played the WSOP, but I have heard 30ish pros talk about how their brains were fried after two or three consecutive events.

This. I think an honest assessment of PH is that he is a decent to good high stakes live cash player and one of the the best live tournament players ever. He is to live tournament play what Jimi Hendrix is to guitar, the man can just play regardless of whether he is doing it upside down or ass backwards from how everyone else is playing or what the conventional wisdom says is the right way to play.

You are correct, my apologies. My post was made in haste without proper research. Hellmuth has 4 and Ivey has 5 (plus a WPT win for what it's worth).
Also, Ivey has other tournament wins during the poker boom as well.

I don't think you're going to find any serious person saying that Hellmuth is better than Ivey, but the point still remains, Hellmuth is a great player and when he is on TV, the needle moves.


Edit: To wilson1560, Comparing Hellmuth to Hendrix is just absurd. A closer comparison would be Stu Ungar. A person who set the tournament field ablaze with his skill and someone who died young because of a drug habit.

Not in terms of life style, but in terms of playing style. Hendrix was unable to read or write music, but just had a natural feel for it that enabled him to be one of the most successful albeit unconventional musicians of all time. By the same token, despite most posters here criticizing PH's lack of theoretical/mathematical understanding of poker (although I suspect this criticism is vastly overstated), he has nonetheless been able to experience tremendous success in live tournament settings, even post poker boom, despite his unconventional style.

If you want anyone to take your lol numbers seriously, you're going to have to show how you 'took into account field sizes', and just show your work in general. Otherwise this post is so lol especially the part where variance is in brackets and you're talking about 1/47000 events

Phil Hellmuth played and cashed in the first One Drop. Phil has made recent deep runs in major 6 max tourneys. He win the WSOPE main event against an incredible field. He recently final tabled the WPT Championship. Phil Hellmuth is a better hold em tournament player than Phil Ivey. Period.

If Bilzerian isn't bull****ting obviously he has the greatest game selection skills of all time.

That first tirade I've seen before. The second one where he is being a ****monkey to the dealer, who had just sat down, is really classless.

Speaking of PH's tirades, he seems to have oddly impressive tilt control. Bad beats don't seem to impact his play that much. I guess he just gets it all out of his system by swearing at everyone in a three block radius. Watching him explode, you would expect him to start playing like Mike Matusow does after a bad beat, or worse, but he doesn't. I wonder how much of it is an act?

I am hoping that a lot of people here are trolling. Hellmuth isn't a very good player, he's just got absolutely no clue about playing any kind of stack size and plays shortstacks so bad it's extraordinary.

Not to hard to play vs huge fishes and have access to great (ie weak) games when you have millions and millions at the bank

(and if you lose you don't even give a damn since you don't need that money to live)

So Bilzerian doesn't count and he probably would never have won a million at poker if he had to start completely busto and had to grind a bankroll.

You obviously haven't thought about his stats. He undoubtedly makes some mathematically unsound plays, especially short-stacked, but more than makes up for it with unique live skills. If you have enough skill in other areas you can have leaks and still be great. The record speaks for itself.

Nice sample you got there

Remember a short while ago when a player won 3 tournaments on pokerstars with all more than 10k entrants? Including one with I believe 50k or something entrants. That alone is statistically more difficult than anything any tournament player has ever done in his life. He must be the greatest player ever.

And no, I haven't looked at his stats because frankly I don't give a crap. I've seen how he plays. I have seen how terrible he is versus any kind of thinking player so even if he wins every tournament from this day till 2020, I still wouldn't alter my opinion.

Heads-up is often considered the most skillful form of NLHE. Now tell me how a bad player won NBC Heads-up Championship once and runner-up once. Don't forget the championship included some of the best HU players around.