Phil Hellmuth often talks about his “white magic,” which is how he categorizes the unique edge that he has on other poker players. Hellmuth often claims he’s “the best” but at the same time he is often disrespected by strong players. Hellmuth’s promotion of his “white magic” is his way of saying “You don’t understand my mysterious and unseen powers.”
I do think that there are certain things that Hellmuth does that are unorthodox and that work for him, and that are also relatively unstudied and unanalyzed. So I wanted to write this piece to analyze some of what I’m seeing that I don’t often see talked about.
A quick caveat: my own focus has been on poker tells and not poker strategy. As I always take pains to point out in my books and videos: poker tells are much less important than poker strategy. Poker is a very complex game (if you want confirmation of that, read some of these answers) and I just haven’t worked that hard on my strategic game. Another way to say this is: I would never attempt to teach anyone strategy. All that is to say that I’m more confident about my ideas about Hellmuth’s psychological and tell-related tactics than I am about the strategic stuff I’ll mention.
Okay, so here are some ideas about what Hellmuth’s hidden strengths might be.
His celebrity status induces errors and bad play
Hellmuth is arguably the most well known player in the world. He came to media attention early on in the poker days, in the 90s, and he has benefited from being one of those early stars, when there wasn’t much competition (Daniel Negreanu is another example of that). This isn’t to say these early stars are not good or weren’t capable of improving by now even if they started out not that good; it’s only to say that they got many opportunities (e.g., sponsorships, invitations to games) that players of similar caliber today would not. And both Negreanu and Hellmuth have been quite good at getting attention and staying relevant in the promotional world of poker.
And when you’re a celebrity poker player, many recreational players like to have a story of playing with you, something they can tell their friends, something to remember later. And this means that many recreational players will often err on the side of looseness when playing with Hellmuth; they’ll err on the side of giving him chips because “at least I got to play a pot with Phil Hellmuth!” And remember that Hellmuth’s most impressive work has been in large entry fields with many recreational players; it’s easy to imagine some chunk of his success is due to that easier money.
And it also perhaps helps explain his extreme patience, because it does actually make more sense for him to wait for a better spot where someone is willing to loosely dump some money to him. It makes more sense than it can make for most other players.
There are other aspects to his celebrity that help him. It’s easy to imagine he’d be more easily able to verbally manipulate recreational players in various ways (for example, being able to “talk down” someone from calling when he’s bluffing). The main point is that Hellmuth has had decades of being accustomed to being a celebrity, and decades of time to figure out how to use that strange dynamic to his advantage in various ways.
Psychological stuff and tells
A 2018 USA Today headline
Hellmuth is known for his belligerent mannerisms: his whining and his berating of players. This is what earned him the nickname “The Poker Brat.” In one World Series of Poker televised event, a player refused to shake his hand when Hellmuth sat down; that’s just to give you a sense of how polarizing a figure he can be.
I think one of Hellmuth’s biggest “white magic” abilities is in how he has likely adapted to how people react to his belligerent act. In my book on verbal tells (and in other places), I talk about how you can tell a lot by how people react to you, by how angry or conciliatory they seem. A player who is making a significant-sized bluff is unlikely to be rude or mean to his opponent because he doesn’t want to “trigger” his opponent to call out of anger or frustration. This general tendency means that when a player making a significant bet expresses irritation or anger with an opponent, even to a small degree, it will tend to point to that player being relaxed. If they were bluffing, they’d just be more stoic, less willing to offend, more conciliatory.
And Hellmuth often offends people. He often gets on their nerves. And so he generates many opportunities to get the kinds of reads I’ve just talked about. Here’s an example of how this can play out:
- Hellmuth has been berating a certain player for a while. That player is also very irritated with Hellmuth and has been occasionally berating him back and looking visibly annoyed.
- Hellmuth and his opponent get in a hand and they get to the river. Hellmuth’s opponent goes all-in.
- Hellmuth insults him and his opponent fires back with a quick insult, very loose. Or, more subtly, maybe he stays quiet and only a brief flash of irritation crosses his face. For either of these reactions, Hellmuth knows his opponent is unlikely to act that way if he were bluffing. Hellmuth folds.
- Later on, the two get into another hand and his opponent makes a significant river bet. Hellmuth whines and berates his opponent, but his opponent is stoic and neutral, and doesn’t give anything way. Hellmuth is much more likely to call here, because he knows the general tendencies and, more importantly, he’s seen at least one example of how his opponent acts when he’s value-betting.
I think many people, even some strong players, can underestimate how much information there can be in situations like this. Especially with how information can be present by comparing behavior across multiple hands.
I’m pretty sure I have some examples of this in my database of poker hands, so I may try to plug a video in here later of a spot where I think this was likely a factor.
Now it’s hard to know exactly how much of Hellmuth’s worst antics are done when the cameras aren’t rolling or when the poker press isn’t around. I have read and heard anecdotes that suggest he often acts similarly even when there’s no media around, but hard for me to know that. (I may try to find some evidence for this later, but if anyone has information about that, love to hear it.) But I think one important point here is that: as long as people can perceive that there’s a potential benefit, no matter how slight (e.g., a poker reporter far off in the distance), for Hellmuth to act badly and get a little media attention, it a) gets Hellmuth off the hook a bit because people understand why he may be behaving that way and that he’s not doing it just for actual asshole-ish reasons, and b) it also helps Hellmuth escape analysis for what other, more practical in-game gains he might be getting from that behavior.
He depresses and angers people and makes them more okay with losing
Have you ever played poker with someone who is really annoying? Who just makes you miserable? I’ve played with many people like that and it can honestly sap my will to keep playing. I’ve only played a few dozen tournaments, most of them pretty low stakes. The last tournament I played was a few years ago at a WSOP $1500 buy-in NLHE event. I was playing well and feeling good about things until the end of the first day, when I got moved to a table with one of the more annoying people I’ve ever played with. He was the opposite of Hellmuth, full of cheesy jokes and laughing too much and trying to talk a lot to people when they clearly didn’t want to talk. He really got under my skin. My head started filling with thoughts like “Why is this guy behaving this way? Is he actually mentally unwell in some way? What am I doing spending my time with people like this? Think of all the more productive things I could be doing right now. My stack is pretty small: what are the chances I’ll do anything with it? I’ll probably have to come back for Day 2 and then be immediately busted.”
Lot of just hating-life and hating-poker thoughts. And soon after moving to that table, I busted out on a hand I played very stupidly. My mind was clouded.
To be clear, I was not a battle hardened poker player at that time: I’d hardly been playing much at all, and my reaction was quite weak. But that wasn’t the only time I’ve had that experience in my life; I’ve had all kinds of lesser forms of those feelings in various shades. And I’d bet that many other poker players can relate.
All this is a long-winded way to say that I think that Hellmuth can create such a toxic-seeming environment at the table that it can make people less dedicated to winning. It can make people start looking for the exit. Maybe even unconsciously.
And there are all sorts of ways that Hellmuth can annoy people: it doesn’t have to be someone getting angry at him. It could also take the form of genuine pity and/or disgust that someone who’s played the game so long and is supposed to be a representative of the game and who claims to be “the best” at the game and has written a book about the power of positive thinking (I love the irony) could still behave so miserably. It might be that Hellmuth can seem so pathetic and broken, so mentally unwell, that he might make some opponents feel almost cavalier about losing to him, because they already feel like they are so far ahead of him emotionally. When you’re playing someone who acts like a loser, you may feel like a winner even if you lose that hand of poker.
Or Hellmuth’s behavior just may make the game more demeaning in general. It’s easy for poker to frequently seem seedy, as a lot money you make as a pro player comes from people who are simply much, much worse than they realize they are, and from many people with gambling problems. Some games you play in are worse than others in that regard. Having to listen to Hellmuth curse and berate people, and complain, and talk about people’s hands, and act out of turn may debase the game a little bit more in that moment, and have some people feeling like maybe it’d be all right to get the hell out of there.
As I joked on Twitter: Hellmuth’s opponents have reverse implied odds, emotionally speaking.
Dark checks can make reads easier
One thing Hellmuth likes to do is “check dark” (i.e., check first to act before the next board card or cards have come out). I’ve seen some people speak as if this was a strategic flaw of his, but it’s not: Hellmuth almost always takes a pretty passive line and he seldom donk-bets. So if he knows he’s not going to be betting no matter what the board will be, it hardly matters in a strategic sense if he dark checks. (It does make it slightly more meaningful when he doesn’t dark check that he has a hand that theoretically could donk-bet on some boards, but he’s not dark checking enough for that to be much info.)
But what might be the value that Hellmuth gets from dark checks?
The main value is that it makes his opponent now be first to act. And this can have occasional value in terms of making some behaviors more meaningful and easier to spot. I’ll give you a few examples of this:
- It makes timing tells more “pure.” If Hellmuth were to wait for the next card(s), and then take a few seconds before checking, information about his opponent’s timing is not that pure because his opponent has had the few seconds that Hellmuth took to think about his next move. The dark check starts the clock immediately on the opponent. For one example of how this might come in handy: significantly-sized bets that happen on more immediate side can be quite polarizing, and skew towards bluffs (long story short because a) players with strong hands tend to want to give the perception of having something to think about, and b) players with medium-strength hands actually have things to think about, and c) because bluffers have more of an incentive to appear confident). Another example would be a fairly quick check-behind in a big pot tending to indicate someone on stronger side of range, because if they were on weaker side of range they’d have more thinking to do and more incentive to appear thoughtful.
- It allows Hellmuth to focus more on his opponent, which allows more opportunity for reading tells in general. Some of the most useful tells are how opponents react to the board when the new card or cards arrive. A player who connects well will often glance away quickly, although many players only glance quickly at the board as standard practice; much more meaningful is a long stare at the board, which will generally indicate the lack of connecting and no reason to look away. That’s just one example; the point is that by putting the spotlight on his opponent and watching him intently from the beginning, Hellmuth’s put himself in a spot to gather more information.
When it comes to these tells: obviously these are much more helpful when playing more recreational players. The more skilled his opponent is, the less it will matter. But even then, I’d say: the big benefit that skilled players get from tells when playing other skilled players is making up their mind in borderline spots. So this means that, even if it’s something he’s rarely basing a decision on, if he gets some small piece of info (like a long stare at board) that makes a weak hand more likely, and his opponent bets, Hellmuth might take a borderline spot (like a strong draw) and use that piece of info as reason to raise. Or whatever. The point is there are many ways behavioral information, even if you think it’s only slightly reliable in long run, can be used as decision tie-breakers. (If you’re interested to hear more on that, I’ve got this interview with high stakes pro Brian Rast.)
Patience and waiting
Hellmuth is primarily a tournament player; that’s what he’s known for. He has always had a bad reputation amongst his peers when it comes to cash games. He was known for putting on a pretty bad showing in televised cash game shows. He’s known for avoiding high stakes cash games with skilled players and primarily seeks to play in private games versus mainly recreational players (totally understandable, don’t get me wrong). When it comes to tournaments, it’s always hard to know someone’s true ROI (return on investment), because while we can see their winnings, we can’t see all their losses: we don’t know the many expensive events they bought into where they didn’t cash. But what we can definitely say is that Hellmuth has had a lot of good results in tournaments, especially large-field tournaments that have many recreational players.
Back in the day, in the 2000s and before that, tournament bets and raises were often quite large, much larger than they are today. Hellmuth used to get a lot of disrespect from people for his “small ball”, waiting-around approach. He has long been known for waiting around with a small stack, biding his time, and also known for limping pre-flop when other players wouldn’t.
Now, however, some of those disrespected “small ball” techniques have been shown to be part of a game theory optimal approach. Advanced poker solver programs have shown that there can be value in being more patient and making smaller bets than people used to think was good. (They’ve also shown that there are spots where quite large bets can make sense despite being unintuitive. Poker is a very complex game.)
And patience becomes more important near the end of the tournament because there can be big jumps in payouts when someone is eliminated. ICM theory (independent chip model) is a calculation for estimating how people’s stack sizes equal a rough actual dollar amount in equity (i.e., what your stack at that point in the tournament is generally worth to you in dollars), and that calculation takes into account the stack sizes and a list of the payouts. You can read up on that if you want, but the gist of it is that ICM shows mathematically why being patient often makes sense at those points. If you’re too aggressive or get involved too much, ICM theory shows that you are throwing money away that could have easily been yours if you’d just not played a hand for a few more minutes and waited for someone to be eliminated.
One interesting thing about this, though, is that it’s never very clear what’s genius or idiocy in a lot of these “in the money” tournament spots. When other players are playing quite tight due to the pay jumps, it can become smart to play more aggressive and steal some of that scared money. This is why you can find debates about specific plays framed like “Was this ICM suicide? Or ICM genius?” (this is mentioned briefly in this Upswing Poker piece about ICM).
And part of our uncertainty around these spots is that, while we have a lot of game theory optimal (or nearly so) solutions for straightforward heads-up spots similar stack sizes, tournament spots are much harder to solve, because they’re a) multi-way, and b) involve different stack size considerations, and c) pay jump considerations. (Again, I’m not a strategic expert, so if you think I’m getting anything quite wrong here, please let me know with Contact form.)
Worth emphasizing that these are considerations in tournaments, not cash games. In tournaments, there can be value to lasting longer and waiting for spots. In cash games, because you can buy back in and add on money at any time, you can think of cash games as one long session, and so these considerations aren’t present. This means that you should generally seek every edge possible because you can just rebuy if you lose that pot, whereas in a tournament there is a big downside to losing pots, so you try to avoid close situations.
Even though tournament strategy has become more patient over the years, Hellmuth still seems to be on the extreme end of that side of things. Now, like then, he still is often laughed at for his very “small ball” approach, his awkward limps with a small stack, his tight folds. But it’s possible that there are solutions to tournament spots that are even tighter than we know. Maybe it is possible to wait for hands more than we know, from a fundamental game theory perspective.
I think what is more likely than that, though, is simply that most players are still too aggressive in many spots considering they’re playing someone who is playing very patiently. Many players pride themselves on their aggression, on their fearlessness. Which are good qualities, but I think many players, even good ones, err too much on the aggressive side. One factor here is that most players, including strong players, excel at both cash games and tournaments: they don’t focus solely on tournaments, whereas Hellmuth has focused almost entirely on tournaments. And what this means is that their cash game skills may cause them to play a little more aggressive than they otherwise would.
And as I’ve said, I think it’s also possible that Hellmuth’s behavior and style can aggravate players into being more on the aggressive and reckless side.
His unorthodox moves can induce errors
Hellmuth also just does some weird things. Part of these weird things is the very-patient aspect, but it’s more than that. He makes very small bets and min-raises when other strong players wouldn’t, he often takes very “trappy” lines, checking strong hands that other players wouldn’t.
And I think these spots can induce his opponents to react badly because they represent less-played and less explored branches of the game tree. For example, if Hellmuth’s opponent bets on the turn and Hellmuth makes the minimum raise (just doubling the bet), that is something that players don’t often see, and it means they can be in uncharted waters, and means they may make a mistake. And maybe some of those mistakes err on the more aggressive side (as we were talking about above).
To be clear: I’m not saying that I think Hellmuth actually excels in these spots. I don’t think he has advanced knowledge of these weird, lesser explored spots. I just think that if his weird approach results in his opponents making a few mistakes more than they would have (e.g., paying off more than they should, or re-raising him when they shouldn’t), that will help Phil whether he knows what he’s doing or not.
Conclusion
If even a few of these points I’ve mentioned are valid, then we can start to see how there are some things about Hellmuth that are unusual and that benefit him. I’d also say that I think most of these are primarily benefits to him when playing versus pretty weak competition.
Have we solved the case of Hellmuth’s “white magic”? Have we defined it? At end of day of course I don’t know what’s going on in that strange brain of his but hopefully this piece puts a few more pieces of the puzzle together.
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