How does Phil Hellmuth win tournaments?

[pendragon]

According to Hellmuth, the notion that he's bad at cash games is largely a myth - instigated partially by himself to get action.

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Part 2

He says he used to show Matusow a real donkey play, who would then blab to everyone about how bad Phil was playing.

Also says he is overall a big cash game winner (inlcuding the Big Game, though he only played 4 times last year). Certainly any earlier HSP failure or bad play (which people way over-emphasize IMO) is undone by his recent success there. (though I think him blaming playing a couple HSP hands badly on being tired is a bit shaky)

Now of course Hellmuth is a biased source...but then, I think people's judgements on Hellmuth as a great tourney/bad cash game player come from little actual data.

I think the notion that the best players outclass him and he just feeds on poor players but can't "legitimately" hang with big guns is a perception based on very scant actual information.

[Eponymous]

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It's easy to play 10k tournaments when the top players are playing high stakes cash games...

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Yeah, no top players play $10K tournaments. It's easy, but most players just don't like money, right?

[furyshade]

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It's easy to play 10k tournaments when the top players are playing high stakes cash games...

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Yeah, no top players play $10K tournaments. It's easy, but most players just don't like money, right?

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the ME gets thousands upon thousands of entrants, how many of them you think are even half decent players?

[Sykes]

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It's easy to play 10k tournaments when the top players are playing high stakes cash games...

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Yeah, no top players play $10K tournaments. It's easy, but most players just don't like money, right?

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the ME gets thousands upon thousands of entrants, how many of them you think are even half decent players?

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Half decent? 5%

Good-Great? 1%

World class? 0.2%

[furyshade]

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It's easy to play 10k tournaments when the top players are playing high stakes cash games...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, no top players play $10K tournaments. It's easy, but most players just don't like money, right?

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the ME gets thousands upon thousands of entrants, how many of them you think are even half decent players?

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Half decent? 5%

Good-Great? 1%

World class? 0.2%

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my point exactly, you can go through the whole ME and never have a table that would really be considered tough; maybe one or two good players, but hellmuth can easily get through the average WSOP event without a table strong enough to lose his edge over the terribles

[A_C_Slater]

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11 wins since '89, some with as few as 63 entrants, probably 350 events entered. No doubt he's good, no doubt variance plays a part.

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I was curious as to the field sizes he has defeated at WSOP so I looked it up.

Here are the fields in ascending order:

69
84
170
173
178
194
284
398
441
754
2628

[shoefactory]

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he accumulates chips from other players participatin in the tourney by beating them in hands. he either does this by makin them fold or having the best ranked hand after all community cards have been dealt. he keeps doing this until all players have been eliminated from the tourney and he has accumulated all the chips.

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jesus christ, that was hilarious. i am cracking up at my desk.

[Syntec87]

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cuz hes the best tournament player alive, and people refuse to believe it and still challenge him and lose when they should steer VERY clear of him. They let pride get in their way. and they want to impress him so they prob dont play their best. They honestly get more consumed with beating phil a pot and watching him get pissed, than forgeting about him and concntrating that theres a difference of like 250,000 between 1st and 2nd place and they should be 100% focusd on playing their best game, cuz they prob wont be back at a ft for a long time. And when theyre messing with him to try to win a pot from him, they dont realize that all their doing is going out of their way to play pots with a player much better than they are. You dont go out of your way to play pots with the nastiest tourney player alive. I was watching the hellmuth 11th bracelt video on pokertube(check it out entire episode there) and robert williamson was commentating and he was stunned saying" are these players honestly going out of their way to play pots against phil hellmuth? He then says after playing a ton w/ him that hed put hellmuths game against any1's in the world. Stop being haters, give credit where its due. The 9th place finisher said he was really surprised at how good hellmuth was. Said he had all the tricks, etc. He has 2 bracelets in the past 2 years, even with the huge fields but its all "variance" right guys? Phil 2 bracelets in 2 years...uh variance. Allen Cunningham 3 bracelets the past 3 years.... uh variance again. lol These people just refuse to believe that some of these guys are 10 times the player they are. Even though this fact is proven time and time again. Theres like 4 multibracelt winners the past 2 years, and two of those players were considered top 5 players in the world before winning those multibracelets. over 1000 plyers in wsop tournaments and four multibracelt winners in past 2 years, and two of the four winners this "variance" hits just happen to be 2 players who were unanimously considered top 5-10 tournament players in the world!?! are u fn kidding me? they arent unbelievable poker players. variance baby. just variance. Maybe after bracelet 15 people will say you know mayybe this guys is a beast of a tournament player.

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When did Phil make an account here [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[AustinBOOM]

he's [censored] tall

[rakemeplz]

By staying in peak physical condition at all times, like Antonius.