Laying his cards on the table
No longer is poker a game solely for high-rollers cooped up in gaudy, smoke-filled card rooms at the back of Vegas or London casinos. The explosion of online poker rooms means you don't need to be loaded, well-dressed or even have a good poker face to gamble - you just need a laptop and a phone line. And with poker (as opposed to blackjack or roulette), there is genuine scope to make positive profits in the long run - if you're smart. Thus poker has become a game played a lot by UK students who, with a little more care on a low-limit table, can make a lot of beer money off wealthier, more stupid Americans.
Phil Hellmuth, however, does not fall into this latter category. A partner in www.ultimatebet.com, he takes a small percentage of every pot played on the site. So no matter who wins, Phil wins - he is indeed American and very wealthy, but he's not stupid. I met with Phil the morning after his talk at the Oxford Union and before The Oxford Cup 2, an event organised by the Oxford Poker Society and held at the Randolph Hotel that allowed student players from across the UK to sit down with professionals.
Just two nights before, this winner of the $10,000 buy-in, 1989 World Series of Poker Main Event, blew £150 in a New College cash-game. The devastating loss hadn't knocked his confidence one bit. "I'm at the centre of this huge poker storm right now. And it's long, long overdue. We saw it happening in the mid 1990s - the fact that it's happening now just makes it bigger. Every card room in America is now filling up and there's probably a hundred thousand people playing on the internet for money right now." Hellmuth, the businessman, welcomes the influx of new players and surge in interest in the game, saying he is "swamped with proposals." He has just done "the best damn sports show - period" with Johnny Chan, then "we hopped on Lyle Berman's private jet and flew from Vegas to Connecticut where I played at Foxwoods and won $280,000."
But is Hellmuth, the poker player, threatened by the likes of Chris Moneymaker, the winner of the 2003 WSOP Main Event who qualified from a $40 online satellite?
"I'm a psychological profiler, that's what I do - I read people. I used to be worried about the crazy amateur; it's been an on and off thing throughout my career."
It becomes clear Helmuth is one of poker's undisputed masters, and that any information he dispenses is undoubtedly worth its weight in gold.
"You have to understand the people aspect - you can't teach that but you can learn it. I teach people to learn to trust their instincts, to try to figure out exactly what the other person has. From the way that they stall, the amount of time that they take, the decisiveness with which they move their chips. You start to pick up little things, here, there and everywhere."
As it stands, Hellmuth doesn't seem to recognise this increase in young amateurs as a threat to either his status or his bank balance. "If you look at everything as a threat then you're going to exhaust yourself, right - there's going to be great players come along and they're going to be good for the game, and that's a nice healthy way for me to look at it."
But playing poker doesn't seem to be Hellmuth's main concern these days. Books are a large part of his focus: "One of the most important things to me after my family and poker is writing books. I'd like to have a book come out every year, I'd like to write ten of them. My next book is about poker history in a way that's never been done before. That's scheduled for early 2005."
These are projects still in the pipeline, but his published work has proved popular. He is quick to talk about his book Play Poker Like the Pros: "a great book, a book for the world-wide public that teaches everyone to play the game, with advanced stuff in there so all the top pros have to read it too." And of course (as if things were not hectic enough) there has even been a film optioned on the first half of his life, currently titled The Madison Kid.
"Whoever plays me is probably going to be someone young. I was talking with Ben [Affleck] recently and I was joking with him about it, but he's like 35. DiCaprio might be someone who could play me." Hellmuth recognises that he has had an eventful life. "The reality of it is that I've sold my life rights until I'm 25. I don't know if anyone in history has sold their life rights twice, but I'll be in a position to do that - you see, I think my life has been much more interesting the last 15 years."
But whilst he's keen to plug, Hellmuth is well aware of his arrogant, brattish reputation (his as yet unpublished autobiography has the working title Poker Brat) and is careful to apologise.
"Don't trash me in the press for that please... Every time Sports Illustrated does an article on me they make me look like some kind of egomaniac!" He is quick to point out that poker is not the only important thing in his life. "When I have really tough day, having a family there is huge, the support is so vital. I have to count my blessings. On my bathroom mirror there's two things: my list of goals and my list of things I'm thankful for. At the top of the list of things I'm thankful for is health, and health for my family, and my family. You won't see the poker-brattish Phil Hellmuth when I've read that list and meditated on all the great things that I have in my life." He may be in the centre of a poker storm, but his family provide a safe haven amidst the chaos of tournaments, books and films.
Hellmuth seems thankful for this quiet: "Meditation helps me be less brattish. When you leave the house to play poker, whatever happens you're already blessed".
29th Jan 2004