Phil Helmuth

Phil Helmuth was one of the first "wild young men of poker" When he first appeared on the poker scene in the late nineteen eighties, in his early twenties everyone could see that he was gifted with a prodigious talent and the ego the size of a house. His slightly abrasive manner succeeded in putting a lot of his opponents out of their stride, and he kept everyone awake with is antics when he won the World Series of Poker main event in 1989, becoming the youngest World Champion of Poker at that time, a distinction he held for almost twenty years.

There is no doubt that Helmuth was ahead of his time when he appeared on the Texas Hold'em poker scene. To begin with, he was one of the first poker professionals to attend a University, before dropping out after three years, not through lack of ability, but to concentrate on his rapidly developing poker playing career .

Today, at the ripe old age of 45, you can say that Phil Helmuth is mellowing and even earning his place in history as one of the modern masters of Texas Hold'em, Helmuth has lost none of his energy and enthousiam for the game and still participates in most of the large live tournaments and the famous high stakes private games that go on in and around Las Vegas.

He is a current holder of no less than ten World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets as well as having won several other major Texas Hold'em poker tournaments and championships. His controversial image, although watered down, has stayed with him to this day. It is fair to say that Helmuth has never been an online player, coming to the scene around ten years before online gaming was even thought of. He was, however, the forerunner of the Poker Brats, those young and gifted players who financed their university studies by playing Texas Hold'em poker online and a considerable number who have made the transition, as Helmuth did, of becoming full time poker professionals, both on and off line, and earning themselves a considerable fortune in the process.

They will still have a long way to go to match Phil Helmuth's fortune which is estimated to be around the ten million dollar mark. And with no sign of his appetite for the game diminishing, it looks like there will be a lot more where that came from. .