Can you say entertainment? So when Russell Crowe in Gladiator yelled out "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!" you can freely say no. I say yes! In fact, that is the best part of watching poker on tv imho - seeing some of these guys air their frustration after losing a hand is unique and classic unto itself.

Doug Polk discussed in a video that Hellmuth's WSOP EV is something like +200%. I doubt Elezra is +EV in the WSOP over time. Many people are several bracelets are -EV at the WSOP, but not someone with Hellmuth's record. Hellmuth has many recent high finishes.

Hellmuth does not play the games expertly technically and could not beat high stakes cash games. However, he has a combination of skills that allow him to beat MTTs. It used to be all his bracelets were in holdem. However, he is probably better now in limit and mixed games MTTs because he is far behind current NLHE play.

It's been over 4 years since his last 6 figure score in a non-NLHE tourney. (and that was when he won the razz bracelet playing horribly)

Sigh I’ll entertain this once more. People use the metric of wsop cashes as if they mean something, people massively underestimate how fast the buyins add up. No I don’t follow Phil around and count his buyins but I’m at the Rio playing tournaments almost every day and I know what they cost. So it’s not wild speculation it’s logic and experience.

I’m not calling him or anyone a good or a bad player I’m just saying that counting up someone’s cashes isn’t much of a measure of anything except volume.

Well, as I thought, Phil makes his debut today for 2C

Will he make a grand entrance?

So I guess people are just gonna go back and forth on guessing about Phil's 2019 buyins and nobody is going to take the handful of minutes to look up the events on WSOP.com to see which he entered. Tough beat.

There’s around 7.7 billion people give or take that have had a more successful 2019 WSOP than Phill Hellmuth by not entering an event

I agree with you about cashes, but Hellmuth has won way more bracelets than anyone. If the player with the most bracelets doesn't have a good ROI, then everyone is losing at the WSOP.



He played razz horribly. He also plays NLHE horribly and short stack push/fold decisions horribly.

He wins by skills in tournament play, such as exploiting fish and pressuring players trying to cash or move up in payments. There are young players who don't play limit games well, but do well in limit tournaments mainly through tournament skills and pressuring players late in the tournament. A lot of Hellmuth's edge in razz is probably his reads, particularly telling when a player paired.

Several years ago, the WSOP made available the list of registrants for each event. They no longer do that.

While it is likely that PokerNews mentioned in their daily coverage each time Hellmuth entered a tournament this summer, I'm certainly not going to sludge through all of that to tally his total buy-ins especially since they may have missed some and the exact number is not all that important.

Pointing out that tallying total prize money won in the absence of a good measure of total buy-ins is a highly flawed measure of anything other than volume is perfectly valid and appropriate (regarding Hellmuth or anyone else).

Right, but Hellmuth has $14M in WSOP cashes. Even if he entered every event in every WSOP he played in, he still made a big profit.

Hellmuth has 9 second place finishes, and 14 third and fourth place finishes. This makes him an outlier, especially when you consider that the WSOP had less than 25 events each year pre-Moneymaker.

Those second, third, and fourth place finishes by themselves make him an all time great even if he didn't have a bracelet.

38 in total finishes in first, second, third, and fourth place. No one comes close.

That works more in favor of the sunrunning over small sample argument than it does for his extraordinary skill. How many WSOP donkaments do you think PH has entered over his lifetime, including re-entries?

Just have to check the end of Day 1 chip counts of every event. Well, maybe end of Day 2 chip counts as well, since some events allow Day 2 buyins. Just saying, if anyone cared to figure it out, it wouldn't take that long.

.................

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't think there is a list anywhere of everyone who busted at any time during Day 1 of every WSOP tournament. I think end-of-day chip counts only include people still in the tournament (i.e., with chips).

Woody Allen says, "90% of life is showing up."

Phil showed up. If you want to be the best, part of the what is required is for you to show up. It's not possible to have a conversation about the greatest WSOP participants of all time and not consider total number of hits, hrs, and rbis. Now, if the batting average is low, that's something to consider, but he still leads all time in hrs, and probably 2nds, 3rds and 4ths.

In baseball, if your batting average is so low that it's disqualifying, you never get those homers. You never get at bat. I don't see how Phil could afford to raise a family if he was effectively losing at poker, especially in the days when players didn't get endorsements.

Further, you can't say he benefits from suckering fish when more than half the tournaments his top finishes came in didn't have fish in the numbers that came after Chris Moneymaker made us all proud.

7 cashes and a final table, not bad for an "obsolete" "the game has passed him by" player

https://upswingpoker.com/how-good-is...llmuth-really/

Hellmuth has a high WSOP ROI even if you assume he played every single event over the years.

You made a statement about his net for the Series but without knowing much about his buy-ins, and so not actually knowing his net. How is that any better or different than talking about someone's cashes/gross?

Thanks for the link. 250% roi since the beginning of the boom is not bad. Must have been higher before that.

I know...I know...not enough sample size. But guys like Bryn Kenney, Ike Haxton, and Fedor Holz don't have sample size in LIVE tournaments either. Sample size online don't count because you can't make live reads there, a big element of Hellmuth's success.

We can all poke fun at Hellmuth but he will still go down as the greatest tournament player ever. No one will touch that bracelet record and that's all he seems to care about.

Lol sample size don't matter cuz live reads

That is one way to destroy your own argument

"If it don't fit, you must acquit!" - Johnny Cochran.

Sample size matters but good live reads detection can lower variance extremely. A recent example was Negreanu's fold against that woman who said that she took his Masterclass. That was pure live read based on utilizing conversation, voice tone reading, rapport and body language.

In fact, during a Thinking Poker podcast a few weeks ago, Sklansky said you don't even need deep understanding of theory if you have excellent live reads.

Hellmuth has enough sample size in live tournaments, no question about it.

Lmao poker is alive and well