I wouldn’t necessarily say it took less work, there wasn’t much information at your fingertips and had to figure out stuff on your own. And if others could do it easy they would. But very few did it.

Today’s generation is soft, imagine Issac Haxton sitting next to guy blowing cigarette smoke in his face. Chidwick probably would have been rolled in parking lot. These types of guys like their safe space in cozy PokerGO studio but none to be found in 80s/90s

I mean, he might just have participated more than anyone else. But prove me wrong . My general picture is he enters almost all tourneys every year, and has done that for thirty+ years. Then also FTs and wins add up. Somebody told he won was it 22% of the FTs. Maybe his playing style gives him either nothing, or say 22% of the chips of the FT, making that win percentage natural?

True back then guys who figured stuff out on their own had a massive edge where as today you can really cut that initial learning curve down which is great for people good at studying and regurgitation. You'll see the absolute confusion on gto bots faces when they encounter lines they "shouldn't" bc they aren't prepared for them and they aren't thinking and adapting like an old school player would.

I'd say once you got good back then it took basically no work to stay good bc the game didn't really change. If you were good in 1990 and played exactly the same in 1999 you were still good.

Even before solvers this was a thing. I remember a year or so after black friday being in a dream game in Vegas that ran a few times a week Jamie Gold would play in. As time went on more Vegas grinders found out about it. And you'd see these 23 year olds used to playing online 3xing preflop and being in utter shock when they'd get 6 callers and then having no idea how to navigate post flop. I remember one night a guy was making it 300 blind every hand. If you limped or raised it was still 300. And this kid must have opened to 3x 5 different times then folded when the guy made it 300. Like wtf are you doing? I even saw a few 2p2 posts on here describing this game asking what adjustments needed to be made etc bc these guys couldn't think on the fly in an amazing game. But i'm sure they were super well trained for poker stars 6 max nl.

But when you hear someone like Matusow talk hands in 2023 you realize the low level thinking most players had back then. He STILL is results oriented every hand he plays and has no idea about the percentages of hands. he'll play hi low omaha bleed down to 4 blinds and thinks he's some massive favorite when a guy defends from the big blind with garbage when antes are involved. And he was way ahead of most of the half wits 20-25 years ago he played with.

Poker was way less popular back then. Plenty of people who could have cleaned up if they were exposed to poker just weren't.

Don't get me started on Haxton and Chidwick.

Even if he's not #1, he's probably pretty close.

That said, the first year he won a bracelet (1989) the WSOP consisted of 14 events. In 2003 when Moneymaker won the ME and Hellmuth won two bracelets, they already had 35(ish). This year the Vegas portion alone is 95 events.

Thus the least we can say is that Hellmuth is better than Negreanu who also plays as many WSOP events as possible yet never wins.

Variance tells just that much. Half the missing bracelets for Kid Poker is the age, not more.

At least have to give Phil the credit for participating that much, but he's building the legend which got a running start. Not a bad player anyway.

So yes you had to figure things out, and back then the games were probably a little rocky. There were no PartyPoker qualifiers getting 200 bigs in with AJ.

And as mentioned poker was not a safe space back then. Playing for a living wasn’t as glamorous as it is today.

Hellmuth basically has had a HOF career both pre and post Moneymaker

Just look at his Hendon past few years, he’s had some impressive things besides wsop bracelets just in that timeframe. 2nd in 10K Dealers Choice, 2nd in 50K PLO, 2nd in 3K NLHE, he won a 10K nlhe in US Poker Open filled with a bunch of Realiable Source’s heros, 2nd in 15K eight game, and went something like 9-1 in those heads-up challenges

I think people would be surprised if the numbers were publc.
The volume put in by Shaun Deeb since the schedule has expanded so much might even put him ahead.

Hilarious this debate is being relitigated cuz a manchild won a turbo

yea 2 hof careers describes him fairly. it's pretty funny how much people trash his tournament resume. It's like in sports when people don't like an athlete so they can't be objective about his abilities or what he's done in his career. Helmuth is a jackass so a lot of people don't want to give him credit where its due.

You are correct. In 10 years or so DNegs will have another 10+ bracelets for sure.

basically this…I guess some of these dudes need to see a Chidwick roll out of bed in the year 2033 and see him win some 3k WSOP super turbo flippament. I don’t.

It was a 10K and many of your high roller heroes did enter

Lol Super Turbo flippaments

yeah they totally don't have these turbos in Triton series, amirite?
Weird fixation on chidwick btw.

edit: btw I just realised looking at the all time money list (which doesn't mean profit btw) , that it makes Phil winnings' total even more impressive, considering the low buy-ins he plays.
most of the names at the top of the list got there playing super high rollers, obvisously winnings are going up crazy fast.

Chidwick probably was not interested because there was going to be a lot of talking, playing fast, gambling, and having fun

Yeah those fields would be licking their chops at the sight of PH at their table, just like any pros for the better part of the 2000s.

Yeah they will just have to be content with just passing money back and forth to each other.

Those are kind of like the steroid age in baseball. Chidwick = Sammy Sosa. Poker has been berry good to Chidwick

Definitely not. Sosa and Mcgwire were awesome to watch in 98.

I have absolutely no idea how you come up with a post like this after quoting mine.

To continue on what I was talking about, I'm also very curious with actual profits if any of the super high roller people.
Is there anyway to get that sort of info on the net?
Anyone knows?

But they were all roided up. And I once saw Chidwick do the fake punch in stomach to Bonomo like McGwire did to Sosa

Not easy nowadays. But next year he could luck out and get 2-3.

lol and so could I but it's like 1/100,000

[QUOTE=plaaynde;58183406]I mean, he might just have participated more than anyone else. But prove me wrong . My general picture is he enters almost all tourneys every year, and has done that for thirty+ years. /QUOTE]

I don't think this is even close to being accurate. He's played few of the lower buy-in events, and for most years he doesn't stay in LV for the duration of the series.

So yes, having played since 1989 he's entered a slew of WSOP events over the past 34 years. But part of his singular greatness is his record of winning bracelets over a 34 year span, a record of long-lasting success and WSOP tournament greatness that no other player has even come close to. Take Seidel for comparison. Playing in the WSOP since '88 and notching his first win in '92, Erik has an impressive 9 bracelets, but his most recent win in 2021 came after a 14 year bracelet drought. And I don't believe Seidel has played substantially fewer events since then than Hellmuth. By contrast, Phil's longest drought between bracelets has been 5 years. As for the younger stars still in their 30s and early 40s who've racked up 5 or 6 bracelets, like Deeb, Ausmus, Glaser, and Rast, only time will tell if they can match Phil for long-term Series success over 3-4 decades.

I don't have firm numbers on events played, and so stand to be corrected if someone does and the data prove me wrong, so take the above as an educated opinion only.

Correct