Re: ten dumbest poker players
$1,000,000 liquid in a bank is actually quite a large amount. I have no idea if Phil has that or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't. His '04 shows $96K in tournament winnings. Against that, I suspect he played the great majority (if not all) of the WSOP events and perhaps another dozen $10K events. The WSOP buyins alone are almost $95K, assuming only one buy for the 2-7 rebuy event. Using these conservative assumptions and plugging in $30K for expenses, he's probably $150K in the hole in tournaments in '04, assuming he's playing his own money and assuming he's breakeven in cash games. That's a pretty big number to fade to still have a million in easy liquidity. His book income exists, but that's not likely a big number -- unless you're of Steven King's ilk, book writing is not all that profitable. His stake in UB is certainly an open question and may pay dividends, but at least some of that is likely locked up as equity.
His gross from prior years (e.g. 977K in tourney winnings from '03) is not a net. Take off tourney buys (another $150K) and pay tax on the rest, and that $977K number drops all the way down around $400K. Remember, he's paying the absurdly high California state rate in addition the federal freight.
Using this gross speculation, it wouldn't shock me if he had nowhere near that number in readily liquid assets.
On the deeper point, Hellmuth is a smart guy. He's not nearly as precise as or analytical as many others in the poker world (like our man Sklansky), and he is occasionally quite wrong (e.g. AK versus AKs) but he is very very perceptive and very quick on his feet. And yes, I've played with him, probably a dozen times. Not as much as others here, to be sure, but more than enough to be comfortable saying that anyone who thinks Hellmuth is stupid is seriously misguided.
|