Hellmuth cashing in away from poker

It's 7 a.m. on the West Coast when Phil Hellmuth picks up his phone on the first ring Tuesday for a scheduled interview. No ordinary poker player he, Hellmuth is cranking up his public-relations machine at a time when many of his colleagues might just be coming in from the previous evening's gambling.

These days, Hellmuth earns more away from the green felt than on it.

"I'm a businessman," Hellmuth said. "As a businessman, I have a lot of endorsement deals. But endorsement deals are not what's going to make someone wealthy in this country. Even if you're making $3 million a year in endorsements, if you're someone like me, who lives in California, you're going to be paying $1.5 million in taxes.

"It's really tough to get really wealthy on a salary. I'm from Silicon Valley, and I've watched what's happened up here. I learned the game."

Let others limit their world to clay poker chips, Hellmuth finds time to contemplate silicon chips, too.

"The game is to have pieces of companies. If you want to become really wealthy, you'd better find a way to have five percent of three or four technology companies and, guess what? If one of them hits, you're looking at between $50 and $500 million."

At 41 years of age, Hellmuth is a one-man media and investing conglomerate. If you're into poker, particularly the Texas Hold'em variation, you know Hellmuth as one of the world's best practitioners. If you have only a cursory interest in the game, you know him as the Poker Brat. He berates inferior players, they are in abundance, for poor play. He bemoans fate when he's outdrawn, costing him large pots.

On the way to winning a 64-player heads-up poker tournament earlier this year, Hellmuth was the guy who literally fell out of his chair and onto the floor -- an act played and replayed ad nauseam by NBC -- after getting unlucky against Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, another accomplished player. But Hellmuth recovered to win the championship. Embellishing his colorful reputation was not an altogether unwelcome side benefit.

"It's probably going to make me an extra $100 million over my career," said Hellmuth of his bad-boy image. "I'm still trying to get better because I want to just for me. But it's funny, because now, my agents and my companies want me to be Phil Hellmuth, the bad boy of poker."

Hellmuth has a line of clothing, promotes sunglasses, is a member of Team Ultimatebet (an on-line poker site), has a fantasy poker camp, writes books and on and on and on.

He has won nine championship bracelets in his career during World Series of Poker events and was the champion of the climactic $10,000 buy-in, no-limit hold'em tournament, the annual so-called main event, in 1989 at age 24.

ESPN's coverage of 2005 World Series events began airing last night. You'll see Hellmuth eventually, just not as a winner.

A 10th bracelet eluded him, but legends Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan each achieved that milestone.

"I always thought that I'd be the first to 10, not the third," said Hellmuth, anticipating his next win, possibly in 2006. "It was kind of a disappointment."

This was the fourth consecutive year the Series main event was won by a relative no-name player -- Australian professional and former chiropractor Joseph Hachem emerged victorious -- out of field of more than 5,600. Hellmuth went out early after being crippled when a player with king-jack outdrew Hellmuth's ace-king.

But he remains optimistic for himself and his fellow pros,

"The fact that there were six or seven great ones with 27 left tells me the pros can own this tournament again," Hellmuth said, "and probably will at some point. I don't care if there's 20,000 people."

By Sam Ross Jr.

News Added: 20 July, 2005

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