Using data from the WSOP website, I calculated Phil Hellmuth's approximate lifetime WSOP ROI for NL Hold'em.

Assumptions & Simplifcations:

-His first WSOP was the same year as his first cash (1988)

-PL Hold'em events were also included, but mixed games with Hold'em and Limit Hold'em tournaments were not.

-Rebuy events were included, but I just assumed 1 entry fee.

-I have no way of knowing exactly what events he missed, but I assume he played the overwhelming majority of NLHE and PLHE events. Therefore, this is his *MINIMUM* ROI given that there is no way he has played every event.

-I did remove some of the bigger events that I was sure he didnt play (this year's $50k, $100k and several One Drops).

-I included WSOPE and WSOP AP events, but 2016 wasn't included because I couldn't find any scheduling on Wikipedia or with a quick search. I also have no clue if Hellmuth even goes to the international WSOPs every year.

-For simplicity sake between A$, Euro, and Brittish Pounds, I just calculated using US Dollars (aka if he won 1,000,000 Euros, I just used $1,000,000)

-Tag Team, Charity (Besides One Drop Events), and online events were not included.

-I'm sure I made some slight mistakes transcribing the data to a spreadsheet, and some of the info on WSOP.com could be slightly off.



Stats:

Sample size of approx 500 events (471 in Vegas plus the international stuff)

Total Buy-ins: approx. $3,235,000

Total Cashes approx. $10,356,000

Overall Profit: approx. $7,121,000

Lifetime ROI: approx. 220%


Again this is basically the bare-minimum ROI he could have as there is no way he played every single event. I would guess he has missed a decent amount just due to deep runs alone. On the other hand, I doubt he missed any Main Events, and I excluded any events over $10k that he didn't play.

Thanks for this.

I've never understood his often repeated "biggest ROI in history" claim. I guess you could be kind to him and say that he is claiming it for the players that have played x amount of years at the WSOP.

Darvin Moon has total lifetime buy-ins of ~$40k, and cashes of $5.1m for an ROI of 12,650%.

bout 3.50%

is it to justify his 300% markup in the future?

lol this

And joke appart, Thank you OP for your time, it is indeed better to be able to see the minimized stats by ourselves than having to speculate every time the Brat throw his tantrum "best roi in the game"-

Cheers

Phil should be proof that variance is the sickest thing in poker and anything can happen.
He is god awful and doesnt deserve all the praise he gets. He is a giant luckbox who won mostly when nobody knew how to play, hes a giant fish, like chan, doyle, etc.

Every time i see you post its to berate someone whether its twitch streamers or Phil Hellmuth. Please enlighten us about your poker achievements to validate your statements.

The bolded part also amuses me. You do realise there wasn't a wealth of information on the internet in the 80s to allow anyone with a broadband connection to improve at poker? Of course Chan Doyle etc aren't going to be playing GTO in 2018. They were making millions before you were born doubt they care about playing perfect poker now.

Confirmed 10NL broke internet nerd

Keep thinking the best in the world is a guy who doesnt know odds. Keep thinking the best in the world will fold QQ to a single raise preflop. Keep thinking its ok to limp fold an Ace blind on blind for 7 or 8 bigs. keep thinking the best in the world is Hellmuth!

btw Carl i wouldnt even bother to play cards if i was a 10nl playa, son

Maybe Hellmuth isn't the most annoying player out there.

It's obvious he means biggest ROI of players who've played a significant amount. There's likely hundreds of hometown superstars who've played one WSOP event, cashed, and have a better ROI than him.

I don't understand his success, I feel like it shouldn't be sustainable, but there must be something he's doing that makes it happen. Rather than crap all over him on twitter for dumb things he says, a lot of players would be better off trying to figure out what it is and if they can replicate it.

whats his ROI since 2004?

plenty of regs have higher ROI fwiw, and I mean regs with decent sample, live tourneys are ridiculously soft

His success in large field holdem tournaments isn't that hard to fathom. For every bit of EV he loses via his lack of theoretical soundness, he gets back like 4X that by manipulating (usually the less sophisticated) players into playing differently against him and exploiting that.

His white magic bs is in reality being able to tell the difference between the people afraid to bust him and the ones that are itching to do so. Probably 4/5 of his opponents are afraid to bust him, consciously or unconsciously, because they don't want to set off mount st. Hellmuth. The other 1/5 really want to set him off. The ones who are totally immune to this can probably fit on a single bus. Making the passive players more passive and the aggressive ones more reckless is like having a cheat code.

He's not really capable of accepting that this is his only elite skill, and that ironically helps him because his nonsense claims of exceptionalism make him even more polarizing.

LOL at the thinking involved to conclude PH has to be one or the other.

__ __

Seriously?

Yeah, it's a troll, but let's get rid of this notion that beating the best in the old days doesn't count because no one knew how to play is meaningless. He beat all comers back in the day, when playing poker was far from cool and you had to love it and want it to win. It being money, but still.

I think 4/5 of his opponents would consider it the highlight of their poker careers to quietly stack a pile of chips while a busted Hellmuth rages, and have spent time looking in a mirror practicing the smirk they will use if this happens.

I doubt he ever made it that high. WhatsUpGuys is the reigning NVG TOM (troll of the month)
'White magic' ldo.

The theory I hear most is that he's developed a persona and playing style that allows for him to take way more money off bad players than other players do while refusing to engage the good players at the table.

It's crazy how many people fail to understand how little it matters if there's better players than them at the table as long as they manage to only play pots with the ones that are worse than them. PH seems to be a master at keeping pots with good players small unless he has the nuts while getting weak players to stack off super light against him. At least that's what people told me who played with him in smaller WSOP events.

Players with 4 WSOP bracelets post black friday:

Hellmuth
Deeb
Danzer
Hastings
Nitsche
Rast

That's pretty good company to keep.

Also throw in:
4th in $1M one drop 2012 for 2.6M
4th in 300K SHR bowl 2016 for 1.6M
2nd in 50K players championship 2011 for 1M
6th in 100K one drop 2015 for 700K
10th in 100K one drop 2017 for 300K

Let's retire the idea that all his success came back in the day when "ya looked a man in the face and read his soul". And please - don't claim that he's the only pro playing a pretty heavy schedule each summer.

I had a 50% ROI at micro MTTs and I ran a sort of very well (up to 25% top 10% spots, just missing the highest spots -- there I was unlucky) vs. so many players worse than you can imagine, and I was basically a fully educated MTTs player even then.

Higher than that it is maybe a 30% ROI but if you run insanely good (many top spots) and get the 50% ROI. I ran pretty good there as far as the top spots go and my ROI stands at 25%, as I busted out too often without cashing; just the opposite to my micro.

Some top online MTTs grinder has a 50% ROI, so apparently, he ran well with top positions and also got in money normally often, but the usual top looks like 30%.

Pretty much the same story at cash games, that one can take the zero off the bb/100 win rates when comparing online and live scores (as far as people say). Some exceptional scores up to 20bb/100 have happened online also but it is not the rule.

John Nash is rolling over in his grave! After just 9 days of studying Nash equilibrium (GTO) in poker PH was able to develop a profitable counter strategy to Nash equilibrium, thereby in his spare time invalidating the Nash Equilibrium Theory.

$7m seems like a lot at first glance, but it really isn´t that big a deal if you look at it on a net profit per year basis (i.e. deduct travel and accomodation, deduct taxes, factor in that he may have been staked for an event or two etc etc.). I mean, most players lose money at the WSOP, so fair play to him, but let´s just remember this epic line by PH himself: "To you this is just Poker, to me this is my life".

Keep in mind this is only accounting for WSOP NLHE tournaments. His total lifetime tournament earnings are $23,000,000.00 so this sample size doesn't even account for half of his major tourney cashes. How hard is to just admit that he is just a great tournament player with an unconventional strategy.

This is inclusive of his results in 2004



Total Buy-Ins: approx. $2,931,000

Total Cashes: approx. $7,776,374

Total Profit: approx. $4,845,755

ROI: approx. 165%


works out to about $323k of profit per year at the WSOP (including international events) since 2004


***his ROI from 1988-2003 was 743% (lol sample size of 73 tournaments)

All this is NL/PL Hold'em only. Since 2004 a lot of his bigger wins are in limit games and mixed events.

No home Jerome Hellmuth