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The gambler
Palo Alto resident Phil Helmuth has made a career out of playing poker

by Lauren McSherry

Before becoming a world champion poker player, before writing a best-selling book, before all his endorsement deals, nine gold bracelets and millions of dollars in winnings, Phil Hellmuth Jr. knew he would become a legend.

When Hellmuth was 17, a psychic paid a visit to his family. She performed hand readings for all the Hellmuth siblings, but she singled out Phil.

"She told me I'd be really famous," he said. "I hung on to that. I didn't discard it."

Today Hellmuth is one of the best-known poker players in the world, his fame growing as the sport's popularity has exploded in recent years.

Hellmuth, a Palo Alto resident, has a reputation as an intense poker player who is simultaneously unreadable and good at reading other players. He is also known for his bad behavior during poker tournaments.

He throws temper tantrums. He can be a sore loser. He has been known to resist conceding defeat, even when the game is over.

Some Hellmuth fans have come to expect his antics, which have helped fuel his reputation, but the 42-year-old poker icon says it's not an act. He also says it's something he would like to change about himself.

"Even though my sponsors like that, I'm trying to get rid of it because I'd like to be more of a class act, more of a man at the table," he said. "I haven't found a cure for it yet."

Hellmuth is more than just a good judge of when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

After more than 17 years as a professional poker player, he knows to market himself — aggressively.

He has cashed in on the online poker boom and endorses one of the top Internet poker Web sites and a poker game for cell phones. He appears in major ad campaigns for soda and sunglasses. Fans can buy a "Phil Hellmuth Poker Table" and "Phil Hellmuth Professional Chip Set."

When the Weekly visited Hellmuth's North Palo Alto home, he appeared at his front door inscrutable behind his trademark dark sunglasses. He wore a baseball cap, gray cotton shorts, a black T-shirt and sneakers. He had just returned from the dentist. Before that, he had been working out.

He asked for 10 minutes to himself.

"I'm a little stressed out," he said, alluding to the commercials he had shot that week, deadlines he was facing, in addition to "hauling around the kids." He has two children.

When he returned, he was freshly showered and sharply dressed in a black sweater, black dress pants, a different black baseball cap, dark leather dress shoes and, of course, Oakley sunglasses. He is unusually tall.

That day, Hellmuth said his face was on the cover of every major poker magazine, and he had just returned from the National Heads-Up Poker Tournament — a championship he had been favored to win, having claimed the inaugural title last year.

Hellmuth, however, didn't live up to expectations. He was fighting a cold and folded in the first round of the three-day competition, which touted a $1.5 million purse and a top prize of $500,000.

"I was sick, but it's not an excuse," he said.

Last year NBC televised the tournament as a six-week-long series, which averaged 4 million viewers per episode, and a 2-hour finale, which garnered 6 million viewers. (The series is scheduled to air on NBC Sports April 16-May 21.)

This year, Hellmuth signed on to do an advertising campaign that would be televised during the series. The ads were developed around the theme, "It's just too easy."

The only catch: It wasn't.

The tournament is notorious for unpredictability because it is not seeded. In the first round Hellmuth went up against David "Chip" Reese, also regarded as one of the top poker players in the world.

"I had the advantage, but it didn't matter," Hellmuth said. "You don't want to face somebody that tough in the first round. ... Imagine the No. 1 and 2 teams in the NFL having to play off early in the playoffs. You'd prefer it if they had a chance to play at the end at the Super Bowl."

After Hellmuth lost, he called tennis star Andy Roddick, who contracted to do a lucrative ad campaign "Where's Andy's Mojo?" with American Express before the U.S. Open in September 2005.

"I told Andy, I said, 'Now I know what you went through,'" Hellmuth said. "Andy was eliminated in first round of the U.S. Open, and I was laughing at him, teasing him about it. Now he had a laugh at my expense."

Hellmuth's study is surprisingly bare of poker paraphernalia. There are a couple of trophies, a leather-bound photo album embossed with "1989 World Series of Poker" and a plaque for first place from the 1994 Queens Poker Classic.

On the walls hang a framed stethoscope and his wife's medical degrees. She is a local doctor.

On shelves lining the walls, books about poker are mixed in with various other subjects — medicine, gardening, fitness and children's books, such as "Babar and Father Christmas."

On a windowsill sit two copies of his New York Times best-seller "Play Poker Like the Pros" — much of which he wrote at University Coffee Café — in Swedish and French. He is the author of two other books, "Texas Hold'em" and "Bad Beats and Lucky Draws." Hellmuth also writes a syndicated newspaper column, which he said appears in more than 40 newspapers every week.

Standing in one corner, Hellmuth's modest-sized desk looks like a slightly messy display for some of the products Hellmuth endorses.

Tossed on its surface are seven boxes of Oakley sunglasses — Hellmuth, like Lance Armstrong, has his own signature line. There are a few copies of his various books and DVDs, a laptop computer and a pack of cards from San Jose's Shooting Star Tournament — another high-profile, televised competition held at the beginning of the month, where Hellmuth made an appearance.

Behind his desk, on a shelf next to a Belvedere Vodka poster depicting an ink drawing of Hellmuth, stands a birthday card from his kids.

Whether or not the psychic's prediction had anything to do with Hellmuth's resolve to be famous, one thing is clear. He is extremely self-focused, a personality trait that could have contributed to his early belief that he was destined for success. His belief never wavered — not even when he was attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison and couldn't see what direction to head career-wise or when he lost interest in college after learning that his grades weren't good enough to get into business school.

But it was also during this period that his success in poker began to take off.

He would meet friends in the student union to play Texas Hold'em. They used Austrian coins instead of traditional, colored plastic chips to fool school officials.

"They didn't care if you smoked marijuana in the union, but they didn't want you to play poker," he said.

Soon he was playing in high-stakes poker games in Wisconsin and traveling to Las Vegas regularly.

"Here I was 20 years old and winning thousands of dollars every week," he said. "One day I won close to $20,000. We're talking about the '80s still."

By the time he qualified to play in the World Series of Poker, which Hellmuth refers to as the "Holy Grail" of poker tournaments, he was 24 and had paid off all his student loans. Hellmuth's resolve to win was so strong he pledged celibacy.

"I hadn't had sex with a woman for like four years because I told myself, 'You're not going to do it. If you don't, you're going to win the 1989 World Series of Poker,'" he said. "Somehow I convinced myself if I could just wait ... I would win."

Win he did, clinching the series with a pair of black nines and becoming the youngest world champion in history.

He earned more than $755,000 that day, one of the largest sums won in the series ever.

Today he holds nine, solid-gold World Series of Poker bracelets.

Shortly after, he met his wife. When she learned he was a professional poker player, she almost canceled their first date. When he picked her up in his brand-new gray Cadillac, she thought he was "pretty weird," he said.

By 2001, he became the all-time leading money winner, having claimed $2.8 million alone from playing annually in the series. He has won at least 50 poker championships.

With poker's increasing popularity as a spectator sport, Hellmuth has become a household name. He currently is one of the celebrities, along with Jackie Chan, featured in a series of Diet Pepsi commercials.

The Travel Channel, ESPN and NBC Sports air poker tournaments and showcase poker personalities — including Hellmuth, Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson, Johnny "The Oriental Express" Chan, "Amarillo Slim" Preston and Chris Moneymaker.

And the popularity of poker is eclipsing other sports, such as golf; more than 50 million people play poker regularly, according to the World Poker Tour Web site.

When the Weekly interviewed Hellmuth he said he had recently been hired to host a TV show that he could "neither confirm nor deny" was "Celebrity Poker Showdown," Bravo's hit show.

According to his Web site, the Game Show Network is developing a reality TV program starring Hellmuth called "Winner Takes All."

There are many varieties of poker, but Hellmuth remains associated most strongly with the Wild West of card games, Texas Hold'em.

In Texas Hold'em, each player is dealt two cards. The players bet. Then three common cards, called the flop, are turned face up on the table. Another round of betting ensues. The dealer turns a fourth common card over. The players bet, and then the fifth and final common card, called the river, is turned. Those remaining bet again before revealing their cards. The best five-card hand wins.

Palo Alto may seem an unlikely choice of residence for a professional gambler. It is about as far away as you can get from the glamour and glitz of Las Vegas' poker tables.

There are no brightly lit casinos or smoky card rooms. Much of the population consists of working professionals and many are affiliated with Stanford University.

In 1994 Hellmuth and his wife, Kathy, moved here so she could complete her residency in medicine. They have two children who attend Palo Alto schools.

The quality of the schools, the area's beauty and the climate are some of the reasons they stayed, Hellmuth said.

He added, "I feel like I fit in well here. I mean, I'm an oddity. I'm a professional poker player."

Hellmuth's reputation for tantrums and heckling competitors during tournaments earned him the nickname "Poker Brat." He can be anything but humble.

"How many people have a New York Times best seller, DVDs, a cell-phone game with 500,000 downloads?" he asked. "My picture is on every product I have out there. I'm on ESPN everyday. The celebrity stuff is just out of control."

In a profession that is literally high stakes and in which money and titles mean everything, it's no surprise that when Hellmuth talks about motivation and success, it boils down to dollars.

"It's not all straight up. It's not all up," he said. "When I had dark times, sure, I allowed myself to feel down, but I always worked on my game. ... I would look back on my life and say, 'You had all this money. Now you're down to $4,000. Next month you're going to have $50,000.' I always looked to a bright future."

Asked how much time he spends playing poker these days, Hellmuth's answer is surprising.

"Sometimes I don't play for a month," he said. "Sometimes I'll play 10 hours of online poker in one week, sometimes 40 hours of online poker in one week."

He spends about one-third of the year traveling: attending tournaments, shooting commercials and emceeing celebrity poker events and charity benefits. During a celebrity poker game he was hosting recently at the Sundance Film Festival, he won a $700,000 condominium.

Hellmuth is currently involved in so many projects he has to keep a list. It's called his "rejoice-evermore-be-thankful-everyday list," which he consults daily. Ranked after his wife and two sons, his accomplishments, fortune and fame and incredible poker talent are his projects: "The Madison Kid," a movie, which has yet to be green lit, starring Hayden Christiansen, who played a young Darth Vader in the newer "Star Wars" trilogy; his autobiography; his series of DVDs; endorsements for Oakley; Ultimatebet.com and a poker game downloadable on cell phones; a personal clothing line, poster and calendar deals; commercials; and "Card Player" magazine, of which he is part owner.

As for Hellmuth's future goals, he wants to be the best poker player in the world. He would also like to buy his own personal jet.

He said the jet will cut down the time he spends traveling and help him "be more focused on poker."

"Getting a jet is all about having more time with my family. And the Phil Hellmuth logo painted on the tail," he deadpanned.

As for criticism that he spends more time marketing his image than honing his skills, Hellmuth concedes it's true. Usually, family comes first, poker second and business third — but right now the business opportunities have as much priority as poker, he said.

"I might as well make a fortune while I'm at it," he said. "The guys that criticize me, they play high-stakes poker everyday, it's not necessarily an easy way to make a living. They're going to have their ups and downs. I just collect checks, watch my stocks. Not to say I don't love poker. ... When you have a chance to make that hundred million, you have to make it the same level as poker for a while."

Staff Writer Lauren McSherry can be reached at lmcsherry@paweekly.com.