Phil Hellmuth made a late entrance in to the WPT on Wednesday.
Phil Hellmuth bought in to the WPT at the last possible moment on Wednesday and was followed to the cashier’s cage with two Royal Flush Girls, eight cameras, two boom mikes plus an autograph seeking crowd track his every stride.
Phil Hellmuth can be found online at UltimateBet playing in a variety of poker tournaments and is a feature of several online poker promotions - sign up with the firm through Crunch Poker now.
Down at the tournament table, and the late buy-ins know that they got their work cut out for them. “It’s gonna be a short day,” says Hellmuth, as he’s in like the very first pot. Two mountains of chips to his right and left, guys who have already played eleven levels, and Phil asks for a count as one of them bets an amount equal to about half Phil’s micro stack on the river.
The chips are nothing to the man who has been playing since Day 1. The board reads ace-queen-queen-six-six and Phil tanks for a while and then flashes two eights as he folds, prompting your man to show the jack-ten bluff with a satisfied grin. “Wow!” says Phil. “You bluffed me?”
The yellow Sony first generation Walkman has been replaced by an iPod and the acne by a three day beard, but Phil Hellmuth isn’t that different from the Poker Brat who stole the show and the world championship as a twenty-four year old kid in 1989. It’s the poker world that’s changed.
He’s grabbed a record eleven WSOP bracelets on the way, however, and that record is something Phil doesn’t care to give up or forget. To the people who say Ivey will take the record from him in the next five years, Hellmuth responds simply, “Impossible!”
Phil Hellmuth's late entrance