Let's not forget that Hellmuth may very well be the greatest live Razz tournament player ever...

Even if we assume that he's played every single Razz event since 1988, he's made approx $460k profit with a 440% ROI.

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

This is way more than just a rounding error.


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

Afaik the wsop page only definitively shows people who cashed and/or if you dig enough people who made day 2. You could easily be underestimating by a few million.

"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"


He cashed in a 1m one drop in 2012, and he played just a week ago in the 1m one drop - you're already at 2m, and you think in 15 years his total buy ins are 2.9 million? Of course the latter result will never show up on any database in subsequent years because he didn't cash, so if we look back at this a year from now, we might even be able to shave off another million from his buy in estimates boosting his ROI even higher!

Where are you getting data for buyins?

There are pretty few Re-buys in the history of the WSOP. The first one was in 2005, and they stopped in 2008 for the most part. There are some smaller tourneys that have multiple day 1s, and I guess they allowed 1 re-entry at some events this year.

Yes, this data is just approximation. There is no way it's off by a few million though. Anything above $10k is accurate as to whether he played or not. I'm pretty sure he hasn't missed the main event or the $10k Heads-up much if at all.

Also from 1988 to the late 1990s, there were very few WSOP events. I doubt Hellmuth missed many of the handful of NLHE / PLHE during that time.

So yes, in the past 15 years it's likely that he has missed at least 20% of the other smaller buy-ins due to deep runs and days off. However, this is somewhat offset by not including any Re-buys and Re-entries.




I only included the Big One and SHR One Drops that he actually played. He did not play the $1 milllion buy-in One Drop this year.

I'm assuming he played every single NLHE/PLHE. I hand filtered out any events over $10k that I know he didn't play. That's why this is the bare minimum ROI, and not 100% accurate.

2012 $2,500 Seven-Card Razz $182,793
2012E €10,450 No Limit Hold'em Main Event €1,022,376
2015 $10,000 Seven-Card Razz $271,105
2018 $5,000 No Limit Hold'em $485,082

Yeah, the guy is a totally lucky buffoon who doesn't have a clue what he is doing in tournaments, and consistently over decades has fluked his way into 14 bracelets against the best players in the poker world.

I'm going to take a great idea from Hellmuth himself and suggest that small-field events held outside of Las Vegas don't count. Three is still pretty good though!

Nice work, OP. Just out of curiosity, I pulled up the two-year sample still available on that WSOP Database. Sorry, I don’t know how to paste this into a pretty table.

[Source: http://wsopdb.com/

2012

No.	Date	Event #	Event Name	Buyin
1.	May-28-12	Event #2	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
2.	May-29-12	Event #4	Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better	$1,500
3.	May-31-12	Event #6	No-Limit Hold’em Mixed Max	$5,000
4.	June-01-12	Event #8	Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better	$1,500
5.	June-03-12	Event #9	No-Limit Hold’em Re-entry	$1,500
6.	June-03-12	Event #10	Seven Card Stud	$5,000
7.	June-04-12	Event #11	Pot-Limit Omaha	$1,500
8.	June-05-12	Event #13	Limit Hold’em	$1,500
9.	June-06-12	Event #14	No-Limit Hold’em Shootout (2,000 player max)	$1,500
10.	June-06-12	Event #15	Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better	$5,000
11.	June-08-12	Event #18	Seven Card Razz	$2,500
12.	June-11-12	Event #24	Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better	$5,000
13.	June-12-12	Event #25	Limit Hold’em Shootout	$1,500
14.	June-13-12	Event #27	H.O.R.S.E.	$1,500
15.	June-14-12	Event #28	No-Limit Hold’em / Four Handed	$2,500
16.	June-15-12	Event #30	2-7 Draw Lowball (No-Limit	$1,500
17.	June-16-12	Event #32	H.O.R.S.E.	$10,000
18.	June-19-12	Event #36	No-Limit Hold’em Shootout (2,000 player max)	$3,000
19.	June-20-12	Event #38	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
20.	June-21-12	Event #39	Pot-Limit Omaha	$10,000
21.	June-24-12	Event #45	The Poker Players Championship	$50,000
22.	June-27-12	Event #49	Ante Only No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
23.	June-28-12	Event #50	No-Limit Hold’em	$5,000
24.	July-01-12	Event #55	The Big One for One Drop - No-Limit Hold’em	$1,000,000
25.	July-03-12	Event #58	Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better	$3,000
26.	July-04-12	Event #59	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,000
27.	July-04-12	Event #59	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,000
28.	July-05-12	Event #60	2-7 Draw Lowball (No-Limit)	$10,000
29.	July-07-12	Event #61	No-Limit Hold’em Main Event	$10,000

Summary for 2012: 29 events, $1146,000 total buyins, $39,517 average buyin

2011

No.	Date	Event #	Event Name	Buyin
1.	June-01-11	Event #3	Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better	$1,500
2.	June-03-11	Event #6	Limit Hold’em	$1,500
3.	June-04-11	Event #8	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,000
4.	June-04-11	Event #9	2-7 Draw Lowball (No-Limit)	$1,500
5.	June-08-11	Event #14	Limit Hold’em	$3,000
6.	June-09-11	Event #15	Pot Limit Hold’em	$1,500
7.	June-09-11	Event #16	2-7 Draw Lowball Championship (No-Limit)	$10,000
8.	June-13-11	Event #22	Pot-Limit Omaha	$1,500
9.	June-13-11	Event #23	Eight Game Mix	$2,500
10.	June-14-11	Event #25	Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better	$1,500
11.	June-15-11	Event #26	No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed	$2,500
12.	June-15-11	Event #27	Limit Hold’em Championship	$10,000
13.	June-16-11	Event #28	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
14.	June-16-11	Event #29	10-Game Mix / Six Handed	$2,500
15.	June-17-11	Event #31	Pot-Limit Omaha	$3,000
16.	June-18-11	Event #32	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
17.	June-18-11	Event #33	Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship	$10,000
18.	June-21-11	Event #37	H.O.R.S.E. Championship	$10,000
19.	June-22-11	Event #39	Pot-Limit Hold’em/Omaha	$2,500
20.	June-23-11	Event #40	No-Limit Hold’em / Six Handed	$5,000
21.	June-26-11	Event #45	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,000
22.	June-28-11	Event #48	No-Limit Hold’em	$1,500
23.	June-28-11	Event #49	2-7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit)	$2,500
24.	June-29-11	Event #50	Triple Chance No-Limit Hold’em	$5,000
25.	June-30-11	Event #51	Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-low Split-8 or Better	$1,500
26.	June-30-11	Event #52	Mixed Hold’em (Limit/No-Limit)	$2,500
27.	July-02-11	Event #55	The Poker Player’s Championship	$50,000
28.	July-07-11	Event #58	No-Limit Hold’em Championship	$10,000
29.	July-07-12	Event #61	No-Limit Hold’em Main Event	$10,000

Summary for 2011: 28 events, $148,000 total buyins, $5,286 average buyin

No.	Date	Event #	Event Name	Buyin
1.		Event #42	Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better	$2,500

Summary for : 1 event, $2,500 total buyins, $2,500 average buyin

Summary for all years: 58 events, $1,296,500 total buyins, $22,353 average buyin

It looks like more than a third of his results came from limit events (or mixed-game events with a large number of limit variants, such as the 8-game mix).


Abbaddabba also raised doubt that Hellmuth’s buy-ins totaled $2.9 million in 15 years. I actually don’t think your estimate could be THAT far off. 2011 is probably a fairly typical year, with his BIs adding up to $148K. And yes, the 2012 total is $1.146 million, but that is also thrown off by the Big One for One Drop. Take that out, and you have $146K. If he averaged $147K for 15 years, you’d be looking at just north of $2.2 million.

If the only tournaments you're excluding are recent big ones that you have specific knowledge of him sitting out in, 2.9 seems really low. The one drops alone are about 1.5m.

What're your buyin numbers for 2017 and 2016?

He's counting cashes for wsope / wsop ap. Gotta add another 50-100k in buy ins per year for that.

Most surprising thing out of all of this was looking at hellmuths cashes and seeing that he still plays tournaments as small as 500 euros. Also pretty amazing that his 1m one drop cash accounts for more than half of his entire net result over the past 15 years.

You do realize this is only for NLHE and PLHE events right? I think that may be where you think I'm miscalculating.

While I might have made some transcription errors here and there, the potential buy-in amounts that I am using are definitely not far off. I just went through a list of every WSOP tournament ever and put the NLHE/PLHE in a spreadsheet and got the totals.

2016 is $189,564 worth of NL Tournaments
2017 is $191,660 worth of NL Tournaments

However, early on there were significantly less tournaments per year at the WSOP (i.e. $11.5k worth of NL events in 1988, and $20k worth in 2000)

This is inaccurate. WSOP outside the US only started in 2007 and hasn't taken place yet for 2018, so there is 10 years worth of foreign tournaments. They have way fewer tournaments than the regular WSOP in Vegas.

The international WSOP total is $345,060 since 2007 (it excludes the high rollers that he didn't play, and it also excludes any data for 2016 because apparently they didn't hold international events that year)

Interesting link. Do you know how accurate that data is? I.e., I'm sure that what they list he actually played, but are there a lot of events he played and busted that are potentially not listed?

If that site is anywhere near 100% accurate, then he does miss way more NLHE events than I would have thought.

For example in 2011 there were 26 NLHE/PLHE events, and the site says he played in 9 of them. It lists 13 for him in 2012, and there were 29 available to play.

He plays a lot of non-HE tournaments, so those HE numbers you have aren’t too surprising.

For example, he won Event #18 in 2012, a three-day razz tourney, which would have led him to miss Events #19-21, all HE.

True, if you look at that wsopdb site posted above it actually looks like a pretty reasonable full schedule judging from the starting dates.

Ted Forrest is probably that.

So 1.8 is a bargain

The jealousy over PH is just funny.

So, let's assume the guy at the top (PH) of every relevant stat is a no-skill, luckbox
and ZERO of the "truly best 25" havent come close to his numbers.
(PH has 50% more bracelets than the next guy (15 is 50% more than 10)

PH also has a mindblowing TEN runner-ups on top of this. (this stat needs to pointed out more often. When heads up he is 15 out of 25 to win, 60%, and this isnt even accounting for if he has a lead or not, basically he is better than a coin-flip to beat you heads up regardless of chip amounts)

How many standard deviations from the mean of the average "best 25" would PH have to be for these results to happen?

How much of an outlier would it be for one person to completely surpass this average "best 25" player?

It defies all logic to say he is a bad tournament player.

If you have any grasp of basic mathematics you are down to 2 possibilities:
A) He does know what is he doing
B) He is astronomically lucky under all conditions (pre-internet, post Black-Friday etc)

To the guy who rips him for folding QQ pre-flop to a bet, PH has said numerous times he doesnt want to do coin flips early in the tournament unless he is short stacked and has to. It's hardly a bad strategy unless you believe 15 bracelets and 10 runner-ups is just a result of luck, or volume, or some other absurd reasoning.

I find his behavior at the table to be childish and aggravating, but put his numbers on just about any other pro over 50 years of age and we wouldnt be having this conversation. You hate his personality and dont want someone of his ilk being the best of all time.

He is.
There is no doubt.
Numbers dont lie.

If there were multiple other people with his numbers, you could argue the point, but he is so far ahead of everyone else it's not due to luck.

"Well, he plays so many tournaments!"
Maybe he plays in so many since he cashes so many and has the cash to enter more?
If someone else won as much as he did, they'd probably keep signing up for more tourneys too?

To the haters . . . you reveal your lack of common sense and math arguing against him.

This. It is really not that complicated. For large field tournaments trying to play GTO optimal is not going to be nearly as profitable as being able to utilize an effective exploitative strategy. And PH is one of the best in the business at playing exploitatively against the type of players who comprise the field of most large tournaments. No one (except maybe PH) would claim that PH would be a crusher or even winning player at heads up online nosebleed stakes. But that is a different game requiring a difficult skill set.

im typically a harsh critic of some of the things he says. i also dont like how he plugs the **** out of anything any opportunity he gets. i understand why he does it, but i think hes over the top. with that being said you cant argue with his results. i would also like you to find a 50 year old man in any field that at 1 time was the best in the world at something and see if thinks he still knows it all. ofcourse hellmuth thinks hes the best. its just like everyones dad that puts on his good dress shirt that happens to be 10-15 years old combs his hair, then looks and the mirror and says..."yep still got it"

interesting analysis OP.

So I think this thread proves it once and for all: Hellmuth is an unskilled luckbox who thinks GTO is a '70's muscle car, ICM is a nuclear bomb, and ROI is a French king. Have I got it right?

I'm totally sure how that database works, but I know one of my friends is on there for the two events he played – neither of which he ran deep. It seems to pull info according to players' initial seating assignments.

My guess is it shows an entry regardless of when a player busts out: Darryll Fish busted out on the first level of Event #44 ($1K NLHE) in 2012, yet his entry shows up in the tourney.

If you had any grasp of mathematics you'd know that it doesn't require you to be astronomically lucky for someone to run way above or below expectation over this sample size.

I've defended phil on plenty of occasions... i think he's not as bad as many others seem to, but deferring to results is insane.

He probably averages about 25 hold em wsop events a year over the past 15 years with field sizes in the 1,000 ish range, and given that number, 30% of samples will be more than +/-75%roi from his actual ROI. 5% will be more than +/-150%roi from his actual ROI.

http://www.pokerdope.com/tournament-...ce-calculator/

That's not even counting the fact that his results are heavily weighted by that 1 min cash in the 1m one drop.

Where are you getting the info wrt which ones he didn't play? It doesn't publish the list of entrants as far as i know, it only shows people who made it to the end of day 1.

I went through and corrected some stuff and will post more accurate numbers later tonight.

There is no reason both these statements can't be true. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you could probably use them to describe any of the top tournament pros.

...

OK, so using the 2 more accurate years of data from the link that Wilbury Twist posted, I adjusted the data a bit. Along with fixing those 2 years, I went back through some older tourney updates still available and got rid of some things I am relatively sure he didn't play.


So here are the more accurate *MINIMUM* NLHE ROI for Phil Hellmuth at the WSOP:

Vegas WSOP Only:

Possible Tournament Sample Size: 428 Tournaments
Approx Buy-Ins: $2,656,059
Approximate Cashes: $9,211,358
Approximate Profit: $6,555,299
Approximate ROI: 247%



International WSOP Only:

*International Pound, Euro, and AU$ used as if they were in US$ w/o real exchange rate conversion

Possible Tournament Sample Size: 45 Tournaments
Approx Buy-Ins: $336,606
Approximate Cashes: $1,134,577
Approximate Profit: $797,971
Approximate ROI: 237%



Complete WSOP Results:

Possible Tournament Sample Size: 473 Tournaments
Approx Buy-Ins: $2,992,665
Approximate Cashes: $10,345,935
Approximate Profit: $7,353,270
Approximate ROI: 246%



Complete WSOP Results Disregarding Super High-Rollers ($100k+ buy-ins):

Possible Tournament Sample Size: 469 Tournaments
Approx Buy-Ins: $1,659,332
Approximate Cashes: $6,691,775
Approximate Profit: $5,032,443
Approximate ROI: 303%


Again these are MINIUM profit and ROI #s. His actual results have to be better depending how many tournaments he actually played. Basically, any buy-in above $10k is accurate, and the amount cashed is accurate. For the other data, it's assuming he played every available event, except for years 2011 and 2012 which I used what I believe to be accurate data from wsopdb.com

In those 2 years, he seemed to play 40% of the NLHE/PLHE events available. I assume in the earlier years when they had anywhere from 2-9 NLHE events a year he played a higher percentage. I would guess from 2005-2018 where they started having 20+ NL events a summer, he probably missed around half of the tournaments. I might go back in later and make one final estimate using those assumptions.

Enjoy.