Phil Hellmuth was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1964. He attended the University of Wisconsin – Madison for 3 years, before dropping out to play poker full time. In 1989, 24 year old Hellmuth defeated 2 time defending champion, Johnny Chan, in heads up play, thus becoming the youngest player to ever win the World Series of Poker main event. A record which he held until 2008, when it was broken by 22 year old Peter Eastgate. With 11 WSOP bracelets, Hellmuth currently holds the record, and with 76 WSOP cashes, and 41 final tables, he holds the record there as well. Though he doesn’t yet have a World Poker Tour title, he has 13 money finishes, and 4 final tables in WPT events. In 2003, he defeated Chris Firguson, earning the title in the first National Heads up Poker championship.
With his total live tournament winnings of $11,330,398 As of May 2010, he is ranked fourth on the All Time Money List, behind:
Daniel negreanu, Jamie Gold, and Phil Ivey.
Hellmuth has made several instructional poker videos, including his Ultimate White To Black Belt Course and Phil Hellmuth's Million Dollar Poker System. He has written many articles for Cardplayer magazine and several poker books including Play Poker like the Pros, Bad Beats and Lucky Draws, The Greatest Poker Hands ever Played, and Poker Brat, which contains autobiographical material as well as poker advice.
”Play poker like the pros”, covers:Fixed limit, pot limit, and no limit holdem, limit and pot limit Omaha, omaha high low, 7 card stud, and razz. Each game includes instructions on how to play the game, and then it moves on to talk about Hellmuths strategic recommendations for: beginner, intermediat, and advanced players. There's also a tournament strategy section for every game. The book also discusses the importance of reading skills, and how to improve them. Hellmuth uses different animals to symbolise cirtain types of players. The elephant calls too much, the mouse plays to conservatively, The jackel is gonna bet and raise with any 2 cards, etc. He also explains what would be the best way of dealing with them, and gives examples of how to ajust your own play according to which ”animal” you’re up against. The last chapter in the book covers playing poker online. The book concludes with some appendices covering the rank of poker hands, a description of Hellmuth's Champion of the Year award, a list of the most prestigious poker tournaments, and some brief information on what it's like to play in the World Series of Poker.
Unfortunately, Hellmuth has been trying to bite off a little bit more than he can chew, meaning that each and every one of the games he discusses requires it’s own book, and consiquently crucial information is often left out. That doesn’t mean that you can’t find useful advice here, but the main problem that I have with this product of Hellmuths winning strategy, is that it's mostly useful for beginners, but it still requiers the skills of an at least intermediat player to be able to digest and take advantage of the content. You have to be to the point where you can pick out the bits and peases that could help your game, and ignore the rest. Still, if you're already doing good in one game, you may definitely want to use this book to learn how to play another one.
This book has reseived a lot of bad press, of which some is very much deserved, and some isn't. Phil Hellmuth, is very unpopular due to his arogant attitude, and I agree, he does seem to be awfully full of him self, They don’t call him the ”poker brat” for nothing. He talks a lot about his own accomplishments in his book as well, but for the most part I think that he does it in a way that shows that he’s well aware of what the rest of the world thinks of him, and that he’d be thinking the same thing, if he had to play against him self. I honestly think that he has that attitude at the poker table, cause it makes people go on tilt, or that may be part of the explanation at least. It has often gone way too far though, and that’s probably because he’s too much in love with the cameras for his own good. He isn’t exactly the guy whom I'd long to hang out with, but we still gotta give his play the respect it's entitled to. You may disagree with a lot of the plays that he recommends here, but it's still worth while reading, since you will always find something that will help you become a better player!
