Phil Hellmuth

The Big Phil is playing inspirationally all the way and aren't we awe-inspired. Getting a smashing run in 2007 WSOP where he got 63 cashes and 11 bracelets, and matching it with 41st final table entry in the year 2008, Phil Hellmuth is certainly going strong. Introduced big-time into the live poker arena in 1989 with his Main Event victory as a 24 year old, Poker behemoth Phil Hellmuth has truly made many a hearts dance with joy.

Phil is not the unassuming type and keeps a rather haughty, don't-care-a-damn frame but then his game speaks for him. He has been pushed into the Hall Of Fame of poker players in the year 2007 and in fact a year ago he joined two of the living legends, Chan and Brunson, to be the third player in the history of the game to win 10 bracelets in World Series of Poker. Well! That stuff needs some beating.

The guy is the author of Play Poker Like Pros and he is quite a deserving author too. With 3 straight WSOP bracelet wins in three days, he is not going to be outdone soon or perhaps in a century. Most of what he has contributed to the game is simply breathtaking. Vanquishing maestro Johnny Chan in heads-up some 20 years ago, he became the youngest champion of main event in the history of the game. This record stood the test of time till an unassuming prodigy called Peter Eastgate broke it in 2008.

Hellmuth is the oldest of five siblings and excelled in many different board games. His agenda since childhood was to win and he felt it was his onus, being the eldest. He was told by his mother at a very young age that man is the product of his thoughts and he could turn anything he thinks into his personal reality. Hellmuth grew with such phenomenal motivational lines stuck on his bathroom doors.

In the fifteen years that crazily sped past, the strategist amassed trophies galore. To book aside his WSOP bracelets, he had some 50 additional titles by the end of year 2004. He has been working seamlessly ever since and as suggested earlier, the last two poker championships at Las Vegas, Nevada are another set of milestones in his career.

There is a downside to his game though, but in fact it has also been encashed by producers across the world. He is known to have a bloated ego which fails to acknowledge a winner. This has brought him the name "poker brat". Even this has been cashed in by producers who feel his antics are tele-watcher's property.

In fact, Phil has unequivocally guarded his antics and suggested that he is peeved when his opponents make strategic blunders but are saved because they have good cards. Also, he believes that his temper does not last long and ends by a couple of minutes.

Anger or no anger, we love you Phil for all that you have imparted to the game.