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It’s hard work being a walking brand. Between juggling Wall Street-sized
business deals, leading the movie star lifestyle, and finding time for the
occasional poker tournament, Phil Hellmuth has his work cut out for him. Here’s
the man himself on life at the top.
Phil, talk us through an average day in your life (if
there is such a thing).
Well, maybe I’ll get up at noon, and oftentimes I’ll be on the phone
for an hour doing interviews or business stuff. Every second or third
day I’ll have a workout scheduled from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Then I’ll grab
some food and go pick up my kids. After I bring the kids home, I’m
working again –writing articles, writing some part of a book, then
talking about all the various deals I have going on. Today I got up at
12:40, met you guys, and after I’ve finished with you, I have to go get
my coffee.
How do you do it all? You must be on a super high
energy diet…
These days, whether I’m playing a tournament or doing whatever,
I’m always on the damn cell phone, so I’ll go to Starbucks and get a
white chocolate Mocha, medium size – Grande they call it – and
about 30% of the time it’s non-fat, no whip, and about 75% of the time
it’s regular with whipped cream. A lot of times, I’ll just grab a low-fat
piece of blueberry coffee cake right there. There are times in my life,
like when I’m writing a book, I’ll just get up at 10 a.m. and start doing
business and, all of a sudden, four or five hours will pass; I realize
I’m starving and I haven’t had any coffee yet. You just get caught up
in all the stuff you have to finish. Having said that, when the poker
tournament comes along, I’ll have absolutely nothing scheduled
during that week.
You live in Palo Alto. Why here and not Las Vegas?
It’s interesting; out of the top 20 poker players in the world, I’m
the only player who lives outside Las Vegas or Los Angeles. Most of
them live in Vegas, but there’s still a bunch of them in LA. Why
here? Well, I’m trying to put my family first, and I know if I were in
Vegas, I’d be playing high stakes cash games all the time. I just think
I get better family time up here. Once every couple of years I suggest
to my wife that we move to Vegas, but she freaks out. She’s a
doctor at Stanford, and she likes the roots that she’s put down in the
last ten years. Me, being a poker player and spending one third of
my time on the road, I haven’t developed roots in the same way. I
could live in Vegas; that would be fine. But my kids have spent their
whole lives up here.
Do you think it hurts your game?
Probably. I’m not exactly sure; I mean, I’ve never lived in Vegas and
I’ve won nine world championships. I think what hurts my game more
is the attention I’m giving to everything in my life. For example, there
were five major tournaments in January; I played in none of them. I
was really looking forward to the Doyle Brunson 15K, because I got
close last year.
But I think my game is on. I finished third in the Tournament of
Champions, and that was, like, four months ago. I haven’t really played
since then, other than the Monte Carlo trip. So I’m not giving myself
a chance to win right now.
It sounds like your businesses are going really
well. Do you make more money from poker or
from selling sunglasses?
A lot more money from business. See, in poker, if you have your
focus on side games and tournaments, a million a year is a decent
amount, two million is pretty good; there are a lot of people doing that.
Let’s just say I used to do that. But I think in business, five to six years
from now, I may be worth a couple of hundred million dollars.
What are you investing in?
I’ve been very lucky. Take my cell phone deal. They
came to me with a cell phone game in May of ’04
and I said, “Yeah, I’m interested but I need a million
shares in stock. Listen, I’m the most expensive
poker player in the world; there are a lot of
other guys out there that’ll do something
cheaper than me and I’m going to want equity.
I’m not just going to want a deal – I want a piece
of the thing.” They came back to me and we
closed the deal, and now they’ve had 500,000
downloads of my cell phone game. It’s kind of
growing internationally, and now we’re starting
to get some competition – the WPT now has a cell
phone game and WSOP, I think, has one coming.
Look at Sports Illustrated America and see what
these athletes are making. Number 100 was still
making about 13 million a year and I’m getting
more TV time than a lot of
those sports stars. On ESPN,
which carries the four major
sports in America, a recent
survey showed that poker
has moved up to the
third largest sport in
the world on TV. What
you have is a situation
in which, as the
stars of poker, our
salaries are going to
keep going up and up
and up and, eventually,
you can cross borders,
which I’ve been
able to successfully do. I
mean, I’ve written a
best-selling book. There
are other borders I
want to cross, too; like
I’m working on a book
on how to achieve
great things in life.
This sets me apart as a
motivational speaker
type of guy.
Now, I already make
$50K a day for appearances,
so I’m not entering the
motivational game to do speeches. I might do a couple
a year, but it’s just something I feel I could give
back, to help other people . I mean, I’ve climbed
to the top of the poker world, I’ve written a
best-selling book, I’ve done a few other things
that are pretty cool, and there are a few little
secrets I have that help me do all this stuff.
Where did you come
from to get to these
great heights? What’s
the foundation?
Well, I have a solid foundation
from my family. My
mother and father raised me
in a very high moral and
ethical way. So you’ll find,
around the poker world,
that I’ve had perfect
morals and perfect
ethics for 20 years.
Not a lot of guys have
a perfect reputation in
poker – trust me. And
poker players have
long memories.
But your reputation, generally, is one of being very
excitable and sort of outlandish…
If you think that’s all there is to it, you haven’t asked all my peers
about me.
Tell me more about the ethics part…
Well, I really shouldn’t be talking to you about this; you should be
asking around. If you do ask around, you’ll find that Phil Hellmuth has
had perfect morals and perfect ethics through 20 years of playing
poker. When the chips were down, I never cheated, I never did anything
wrong – I always did far and away the right thing. People have
trusted me. If I ask a high-level player to give me $200K, he won’t even
think twice. There are only a handful of people in the world who could
say that. My morals and ethics are impeccable and I’m proud of that
– maybe that’s getting lost in the shuffle if you haven’t heard about my
reputation in that area… I thought it was common knowledge.
What’s the best thing about being a celebrity?
(Laughs) Well, you have to take the good with the bad. I understand
why celebrities are skittish and freak out easily, because everywhere
you go people are staring at you – it’s just weird. I’m tall and always
have my hat and sunglasses on, and they’ve been putting me on ESPN
every single day for years. So now wherever I go, everybody’s watching
me take every single step. I know what it’s like because I saw a
movie star the other day in Seattle, and found myself looking at him a
little bit – it’s kind of awkward.
So, the bad part is that if I haven’t been getting enough sleep and
I’m feeling a little bit tired, a little bit paranoid, and people are just
staring at me, it’s weird; but you develop strategies to deal with that.
The worst thing is that you’re always on – any little thing you do at an
airport somewhere is reported – “Phil did this.” If I’m ever in a bad
mood, and I rarely ever am, I don’t give anyone outside of poker a
chance to ever say anything negative about me. But there are times
when I catch myself getting upset over something, and I just catch it
right away. That’s because I’ve realized that if I get upset at this driver
because he’s gone the wrong direction for 40 minutes, he’s going to
tell everybody what an ass I am. I try to let the little stuff roll off my
back. I think to myself, “You’re blessed on so many levels that you can
just let it go.”
One of the nice things is going to clubs. I’m not a huge drinker, but
I like to go out, and the best nightclubs in the world are in Vegas.
Bouncers seem to be the biggest poker fans in the world; the minute
that I show up, the bouncer sees me and whisks me through the line.
All of a sudden, I’m talking to the manager and I have a VIP booth, but
believe me, we celebrities pay for it. I like going to Tao in Vegas. I have
the manager’s number on my speed dial. I’ll call him up and he’ll say,
“What time you going to be here?” and he’ll come down to greet me.
There’s a line a mile long. Bam! We go right through. Bam! There’s a
VIP booth waiting for us. Bam! We’re drinking some Dom Perignon –
that’s kind of nice.
I’m not afraid to dance with beautiful women; I’m not afraid to be
out there having fun. When you’re a celebrity, all of a sudden there
are always four beautiful women around at every nightclub you’re
at. I can’t do anything, but I can at least flirt and enjoy. So that’s
kind of fun!
Sometimes, it’s kind of cool to be famous. For instance, I met
Michael Jordan in the VIP section at the Kentucky Derby, and he knew
my name. The woman from the charity at the Derby kept bringing up
celebrities who wanted to meet me, which was cool. I did ask to meet
Michael Jordan; I said, “If he knows who I am, I’d like to meet him.”
And she said, “Oh, he knows you.”
In 2002, when Ben Affleck was the hottest actor in the world and
I went over to welcome him to a WPT Tournament, I said, “Ben, welcome.”
He said, “Phil! How you doing? I’ve read your book. What
kind of animal do you think I am?” I was like, “Whoa! These are the
biggest stars in the world, they know my name, and they’ve even
read my book!”
Is there a protocol among you celebrities where you
can go up to each other and say hi when normal
people can’t?
There are no written rules about it, but it does seem like you can be
a little more aggressive when you’re a celebrity. Maybe it’s because
thousands of people come up to me every single year and they want
to meet me and shake my hand. So I’m not that hesitant when I want
to meet someone else; I’m like, “Shit! I’ve just said hi to 1,000 people
this year; I’ve earned the right to say hi to one of these guys.” We were
in Vail and Roger Clemens was up there. We walked in to this little
restaurant on New Year’s, and these kids were looking at me. We’re
sitting at the bar waiting for our table, and Roger Clemens comes
walking over, and he’s like, “I heard THE MAN is at the bar! Phil, I’m
Roger Clemens and my sons are all huge fans of yours!” I’m like, “I
know who you are, dude!”
You’re a pretty generous guy. Have you identified the
people that helped get you to where you are?
I
think that I’m lucky in life, and you’ll find that I’ve done at least
six nights of charity work each year since 1997 and raised a lot of
money. I used to give a charity night to my kids’ grammar school. My
event would raise 10% of all their donations that year and it felt good
to me. Yeah, I like to give things back, and I feel I’m very generous
with my family and I’ve helped a lot of people out. You know, these
are the things that make me strong; these are the things that make
me powerful.
I mean, people who don’t have ethics and morals or generosity,
what do they do with their money? Who are they helping and what’s
going on with them? I’ve helped all my brothers and sisters pay for
college and law school because I realized at an early age what’s
the good of having all this money? What am I going to do, just
stockpile it?
At minimum, I chose to go for charities and my family. I feel good.
You have to understand the connection between doing great things in
life and being an honest, honourable, and charitable person. It makes
me stronger. The fact that I haven’t cheated on my wife in 17 years
has been well-documented. And that makes me strong; that makes
me powerful.
And that means I have a base at home here with my wife and children;
I don’t have to lie, I don’t have to B.S., I don’t have to do any of
that stuff. I come home and I get 100% pure support. I think if you’re
40-years-old, or 41 like I am, and you’ve written best-selling books
and won tons of poker championships, and accomplished a lot in life,
becoming very famous and well-known worldwide; if that happens to
you, in general, people tend to implode a little bit. It’s a normal natural
thing – look at all the athletes in America and in Europe that have
made a ton of money, but at the end of their careers, they don’t seem
to have any money left.
I think the reason I’ve been able to hold on to money and accumulate
it in such great amounts has a lot to do with entitlement. If you
don’t feel like you deserve the money, then you’ll find a way to lose it.
And although I’ve been blessed with many great gifts in life, and I’m
still not sure that I deserve everything, at least I can look back and
say, “Man, when it comes to the way I’ve conducted myself in this
world, there’s nobody out there that can say much negative about
me.” Now, having said that, we can segue to what you seem to want,
and that’s the Poker Brat side. Yes, I do go crazy at the tables.
How many bracelets do you think you’re going win
this year?
I
just don’t know. My confidence was shattered quite a bit in ’05
at the Series. Let’s look at the facts. Over my career, I have won more
Hold’em tournaments than anyone in history. No one has my record in
Hold’em. But still my confidence is not high. I have not won a World
Championship since ’03 when I won two of them, and kind of had a
chance to win the Main Event. I was really proud of my play. I was
down there all the time in ’03. When ’05 rolled around, I figured it
was
an odd year and I’d do well. I didn’t do well, and so my confidence is
a
little bit shattered, and that’s a very dangerous state for me to be
in…
although, it’s a very healthy state for me to be in because that’s when
I really focus on poker. I constantly think, is this play good, is that
play
good? When you walk around thinking you’re the best all the time, you
don’t improve.
There are times when I just blow everyone away for two or three
months or a year. I used to do that all the time. And I would walk
around thinking how great I was, and how no one can beat me. I wouldn’t
say it, but I felt really confident. And when you feel confident,
you’re overlooking things; you’re not giving people credit, and you’re
making mistakes. Everyone thinks you need confidence to win. But
when you get to the point where you get as much press as I do, that’s
not true. All I have to do is pick up another newspaper or watch another
TV show that tells me how great I am and what I’ve accomplished.
And you know what? That doesn’t help me. What does help me is not
feeling good about my game. And I honestly don’t feel very confident
right now. I don’t feel like… I’m not going to say I’m not going to
win anything at the World Series, but I’m not going to say I am
going to win something. I’m just trying to get to the next
tournament to see how I do. I want to play poker because I
think that I’m in the groove, but I can’t seem to get to a
poker tournament.
Let’s take the A-Rod charity event I’m doing. You know
what else happens on Sunday? I’m scheduled to do a
poker tournament at Sundance, and guess who gets to
emcee it? Me! So I get to emcee all of the sports stars on
Saturday night and I get to emcee all the movie stars on
Sunday night. And you cannot believe all the celebrities
that are going to be at this tournament. It’s scary. They’re
getting tons of A-listers… Michael Jordan is supposed to be
there. So that’s a fun weekend. But what does it cost? It cost me a shot
at Tunica. Tunica is a tournament that I love. I go down there; I stay in
Memphis at the Peabody Hotel. That tournament has history. It’s a tournament
I want to win. So I have a choice. I can do A-Rod’s charity event
and this other thing, or I can play in Tunica. Yes, I wanted to play, but
could I resist doing a commercial with Mike Ditka and Ron Jaworski? I
couldn’t resist it. But I am going to get a chance to play some poker tournaments
soon, and I’m looking forward to that. But I mean, who can
fault the rock star life? Hanging out with athletes…it’s gonna be fun.
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