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Ok...now I'm wondering something. Is the thought out there that Hellmuth isn't that good?

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The thought is out there, and in fact appears to be pretty much agreed-upon by top level players. There is a school of thought that Phil Hellmuth has not adapted well to today's bigger tournament fields and more aggressive players, which don't seem to suit his style.

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Daniel Negreanu in All In magazine said the top players lick their lips when they see him coming to a cash game.

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Remember that No Limit Hold'em tournaments represent a small subset of poker overall. And it definitely appears to be conventional wisdom that whenever Hellmuth ventures out of tournaments, into high stakes cash games, he is unsuccessful. Whether that's due to a lack of technical ability or bad self-control, or both, I can't speculate on. Negreanu is far from the only person to say something along these lines.

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In my opinion, and this is only from me seeing him on TV mind you, he is very very good.

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Sure, but to be fair you have to acknowledge that it's hard to accurately tell how good or bad someone is from a small number of hands on tv. I'm not being critical, I'm just saying that in fairness one has to acknowledge that.

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I don't care about how he reacts to bad beats in this discussion, try to put away your thoughts on how much you hate him as a person.

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Right, I'm not talking about his personality or image. That said, it's definitely possible that the perceived "consensus" on his skill level is biased by a reaction to his personality. We really have no way of knowing.

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Is the guy with 9 bracelets in Hold Em not that good?

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About the nine bracelets, while it's certainly an impressive achievement, it's worth mentioning that Phil Hellmuth apparently plays a lot of World Series tournaments. And he's played a lot of World Series tournaments for a lot of years. And it's therefore conceivable that he's played more WSOP events than any other individual, ever. Worth bearing in mind.