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Poker star Phil Hellmuth:‘I had a Cadillac and a penthouse but still couldn’t pay my bills’

Phil Hellmuth, 57, is an American professional poker player who found fame in 1989 winning the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. He is widely regarded as the best tournament poker player of all time with 15 WSOP wins, winning over $24m (£15.5m). Today he lives in Palo Alto, California.

Did your childhood influence your attitude to money?

We grew up with not a lot of money in Madison, Wisconsin. The shoes I’m wearing now, black Adidas, I remember really wanting but not getting. They were $55. My dad, who worked in university administration, said: “I’ll put in the first $10”.

My mum was a homemaker and artist and wrote on the bathroom mirror, “You are what you think.” She taught us to think big.

What was your first job?

At 17 I worked in Crandall’s Restaurant washing dishes on Friday and Saturday nights. We’d sneak into the bar next door afterwards.

I cleaned monkey cages in college and at 10.55am hopped on my motorcycle to make it to accounting class by 11.

At 20 I started playing poker and was professional by 21. I’ve never had another job.

Are you a saver or a spender?

I was always a spender, drinking Dom Pérignon and eating at restaurants three times a day. I’ve got good at managing money. A lot of people are talented at making money but it’s another skill to hold it. Most people aren’t given both skills. At 22 I went from $24,000 to broke, as a small stakes poker player. Then in 1989 I won the main event and $750,000, and bought a penthouse condominium for $190,000, a Cadillac, a Porsche, paid my taxes and had a bunch of cash – which I then lost.

I’d drive to Michigan to play poker, and the $3,000 I made on those trips was very handy. It was an illusion living in a penthouse, being a world poker champion but struggling to pay the bills. I was smart enough to borrow only a manageable $20,000.

My goal was to have $30m to $50m by 45, but I didn’t hit that. Things sometimes come a bit later.


Phil Hellmuth during the filming of High Stakes Poker


Credit: PokerGO.com

Why did you go into business?

I realised that being on the road all the time, the maximum I could make in poker was $500,000 to $1m a year. But in business it’s uncapped.

I put a lot of money in Amazon, which was lucky, and I am invested in 40 to 50 funds. And I started joining advisory boards. We have a new [cryptocurrency] coin coming out, Bitcoin Latinum, which I’m promoting as a paid endorser; we think $20 a coin.

I’m also in talks to start my own venture capital firm to sponsor money in Spacs [special purpose acquisition companies]. We have $7m in it. Last year, finding our first company to take public (because I know a lot of billionaires who play poker with me) was a $2m bonus for me.

For a Spac you go to the stock market and say we need to raise $300m at $10 a share. People give you the money but you can’t tell them what you’re going to buy. The second company [to take public through the Spac] was Genius Sports in London, which just signed with the NFL for exclusive data rights. Our third was the first quantum computer company to go public that’s been sitting at $10 a share. Now 2pc of companies use quantum computing. By 2022 it’s supposed to be 40pc.

What have been your best and worst financial decisions?

Best, deciding to get “staked” by a friend in 1999 when I was still worth $1m. This means that someone puts up the money for a poker player and they get 50pc of the profit, so with zero risk if you’re a great player. I’d just lost $50,000 and was down to my last million.

My makeup number [accumulated losses to be repaid before profit is split with the staker] got to be $325,000; the staker was also paying my bills.

In 2001 I won the World Series and won three tournaments and cashed about $600,000. So the staker gets $350,000 off the top, plus half the profits. So I was able to take $125,000. Things had been going well for me, so I stopped getting staked [and so could take the entire winnings].

Worst, in Monte Carlo losing $536,000 to Phil Ivey in Chinese poker. And I’d just put $4m into our account from some business deal. We played all night.

Do you use cash or card?

Cash and credit cards. We have bill-payers so our bills don’t come to us. The bad thing is, if someone takes advantage I wouldn’t know. They once noticed the cleaner charged us $20,000.

Have you invested in property?

We had one house in Minneapolis for 18 years that we never saw and sold for $400,000. We stretched to buy our Palo Alto house for $920,000 in 1997 and it is worth $10m now.

Have you done lucrative TV commercials?

In 2008 they put me on 12?million beer cans with my sayings, such as “If it weren’t for luck, I’d win them all” and paid me $70,000 – the coolest thing that’s happened to me.

Why are you so successful?

Reading ability. I know when people are weak or strong. You just have to look at somebody. Logic’s involved: why are they betting this much? And a lot of staring: do they have it or don’t they? The 7pc to 8pc of people gifted at understanding whether people are lying generally don’t also have the gifts of patience and mathematics, which I do despite having weaknesses.

A “poker face” isn’t impenetrable. A million signals give it away. People twitch. When people talk they’re really dead. Once whenever one guy didn’t have it he moved his chips forward an inch, like pretending I’m going to call. Two hours later, I’d won another world championship.

What have been your biggest wins?

It was nice in 1989 winning the Main Event, $750,000, which is equivalent to $10m today. That $10,000 I paid to play in it was a large percentage of my cash at the time. When I played the 2012 World Series of Poker Europe I put in €10,000 and won €1.2m.

Phil Hellmuth will be competing in the 2021 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas from September 30 to November 23. Watch it exclusively on PokerGO.com

Source

Read more: https://mcc.exchange/2021/09/25/poker-star-phil-hellmuthi-had-a-cadillac-and-a-penthouse-but-still-couldnt-pay-my-bills/

Text source: MCC.EXCHANGE

Disclaimer: Financial information and news are not financial advice, read the disclaimer.
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