Of course Hellmuth is completely in the wrong. Ellen Grover knows the story best.

Did u just make that $100m number up? I've seen his net worth pegged at $20m by all accounts. Perhaps you are confusing him with the other Phil

+2 Side Fact: After the successful IPO, Hellmuth bought platinum Audemars Piguet watches for the major owners and core operational management. My research shows the watches cost over $100,000 each.

Hellmuth didn't cheat and wasn't aware of it until after the fact. That said, he did profit from it.

Huh?

Unless I'm mistaken, when the **** hit the fan and Ivey found out it was a "house of cards" he immediately broke from FTP and filed a lawsuit, then sat out the whole WSOP season as sign of empathy towards the players with their life roll stuck (and perhaps gone). By contrast, as EG posted, PH (and Annie Puke) happily continued to shamelessly shill for UB, knowing full well they were conning their "fans" into continuing to giving their money to thieves.

I myself always wondered why PH and AD all the sudden broke from UB at the same time 6mos before Black Friday. Not sure this was covered in the movie.

To me Helmuth is the hipster doofus of poker
.
Just can't take the guy seriously
.
Great tourney player though
.

This is amazing haha.

the same fanboys defending phil hellmuth are the same ones that got robbed thinking ub was safe, anyone would be pissed after loosing 20k to a bankrupt company why not blame the face of UB(The ambassador) as well as the owners, if UB came back tomorrow hellmuth would be patched up head to toe in UB gear claiming the site is safe and giving his personal guarantee of :blah blah bull ****

Who is defending him?

Do you really think this guy wouldn't cheat? The whole vid is hilarious and worth watching as he gets owned and made fun of, but the real gold starts around 10 mins when in the last hand he blatantly goes all-in and then tries to say he didn't. Yeah, a real honest guy.


http://youtu.be/UOMJdmyn0s8

the video is hilarious I must admit

Sure Michael Jordan probably knows the CEO of Nike and Hanes. That wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't think he's sponsoring them because they're friends. He's sponsoring them for money just like PH with UB.

You seem to be implying that PH was sitting on 2+2 following the superuser scandal. I wouldn't be surprised if PH has never visited 2+2. I think you're assuming way too much if you think he's taking his sponsorship so seriously that he's going to try to get to the bottom of something like that. The only reason he would care is if it negatively effected his image enough to damage his net worth or if it was going to significantly devalue his stake in the company. I think the latter was probably the most likely but still it might not have been too significant to his net worth.

You're free to consider him the scum of the earth, but I think it's safe to say the poker community at large isn't placing the same standard on sponsored pros that would place that tag on him.

Literally had nothing to do with the running of the company.

If you're going after hellmuth for this I assume you'll be going after moorman for his lock sponsorship

(Obv a level, Moorman is a proper stand up guy and I think he handled the lock situation really well but still)

lol...get a clue moran, this guy is owed 20K for YEARS and the very visible former face of UB is out giving away thousands in chinese poker to everybody and their mother, any real player who lost this amount of money would be very justified in asking a few questions about where the money is

Phill created UB. He owned a large piece of the company. Generally, when you own a large chunk of a company that you founded, you have something to do with the running of the company.

This comparison to Moorman is just a fail.

This is probably a sublime point that will sail over some heads, but no he doesn't get a pass here. Of course he says he believed the lies and we can concede that. But, when he learned it was a lie, Pierson's plan to vastly underpay refunds had blown up and the insider group was hip-deep in recalibrating a fallback position to screw players over. That's a crossroad, a come to jesus or deal with the devil moment.

We know which he opted for and his primary move was to take a private round of golf with Leggett to ensure his rep checks would keep cashing. People on this forum were screaming about virtually every part of the lame story being cobbled together by the PR flack Leggett and his stooge, Annie Duke while Hellmuth sat quietly worried only about his own net worth. He claims if he had stood up, players would have lost everything but there is no rationale to validate that point.

Finally, in 2011/2012, he should have declined to accept his final shareholder payouts and today, he should divest of his ownership in the fraudulent... errrr anti-fraud company iovation.

People need to understand that what ElevenGrover has said ITT is the best case scenario for Hellmuth wrt UB. He is being as generous to Hellmuth, and giving him the benefit of the doubt, as much as is possible.

Many years ago, I heard Phil Hellmuth on a podcast. He was talking about goals. He said that one of his goals was to have a net worth of $100million. He then said that he met that goal. He went on to say that a friend of his, Greg Pierson, was getting involve in some high tech venture that Phil was investing in and expected the potential to make mega money. I am presuming that company was iovation. Does anyone else recall this interview? I remember being stunned that he said his net worth was $100 million. If it is, it was from UB. And if it is true, I think people should make him uncomfortable with his actions. If he is currently getting rich off of iovation, the money for that venture came from UB.

Wait a minute. So you're confirming that according to your sources:
a) Phil Hellmuth was still a UB shareholder in 2011.
b) He did accept a shareholder payout after Black Friday.

The last point is mind-blowing because, if true, then it means that he, knowingly, did accept stolen money.
"Knowingly" because at that time it was public knowledge that UB stole millions by not refunding players' money after Black Friday.

This act alone, if true, should bring Phil Hellmuth in front of a court.

He told at least two individuals about pending payouts that he expected they would and did receive. His argument would be the payouts were owed him for selling the site to Blast Off (an insider arrangement that likely counted him as an ongoing owner eligible for profit sharing after 2007). Further, his argument would be that he lost as much if not more than anyone because of the cheating when the entire value of the site went to zero in 2010.

But that is semantics. Let's also concede that Phil had no operational responsibilities at UltimateBet, ieLogic, Excapsa, eWorld or any of the other shell corps. He did have a large chunk of founding shares with an apparent large pile of options prior to the IPO. One of his main personal business lawyers was also the chief legal counsel for the companies behind UltimateBet. At the very least, Phil would have received ongoing, detailed reports about how his company was doing and why various strategies were undertaken. Afterall, tens of millions of dollars were on the line. Obv mistakes were made.

For one, they trusted a hundred million dollar company to a young man who had no business sitting in the chair. Early on, they needed capitalization and should have resorted to debt/VC funding/etc. Instead, the under-capitalized company found a creative strategy to finance growth. They cut Russ loose on the player base. And it sort of worked. They did have a decent (though clearly not great when compared against Party) IPO. Say anything you want about Phil, but he doesn't surround himself with idiots for the most part. From Balsbaugh to his financial guy, Phil does a good job of looking after Phil. Suggesting he just closed his eyes throughout those early years and didn't ask any questions is silly and naïve, especially since he knows Russ going back to the late 80s.

The question arises then as to what Phil could have done in 2008. Beginning in May, he wielded a ton of power. His shares combined with his former backer and close personal friend, Ted Forrest's shares were enough to force the direction taken. Phil could have said "OK, water under the bridge. But now, I'm not voting for any settlement where players don't get at least 100 cents on the dollar with a full accounting." And that would have been all there was to it. Had they done that, the shareholders would have sacrificed cash in hand, but likely would have earned it all back as players streamed back to the site. I imagine Phil struggled with this, but we know what side he came down on and Pierson holding iovation ownership over his head prolly played at least some role. Bottom line, he was a terrible steward of the game who flinched when the game needed him most.