Phil Hellmuth
If you're going to just play with patience, you're going to be at the mercy of the cards.Collection: Patience
Oakley's sunglasses are hot and I feel a little extra cool when I wear them.Collection: Cool
There's more luck in poker. Getting good at golf requires a certain amount of physical aptitude. Both take a lot of patience. Both require knowing when to gamble - either with a big bluff or a high-risk shot. Both can be infuriating.Collection: Patience
I guess if there weren't luck involved, I'd win 'em all.
Poker is about understanding human behavior and managing emotions - yours and the other guy's. That's huge in poker, and it's huge in business.
I used to have a routine where I would eat a meal during the World Series of Poker. I would play, they would call it a day and I would go work out. I would always order poached salmon with mushrooms and I would dip the salmon into a side of ranch dressing.
What gets lost is that half of poker is reading people. When you're reading well and you're making counterintuitive plays, a strictly math player will get scared and start making fewer moves, and then the person is even easier to read.
Poker is really about reading people. What happens when you bluff? What does it look like when the other guy bluffs? Does he look right, does he look left? Under what circumstances does he fold or call?
I was the youngest world champion in history when I won the WSOP in 1989 at age 24.
Poker is supposed to be fun.
My favorite poker game is No Limit Texas Hold 'Em.
It is very, very difficult to quit when you're losing. And nobody does it well.
Playing only when you have a strong hand, also known as being a slave to the cards, is simply not the way to win tournaments.
I'm a big believer in the power of your own words.
We have hillbillies with third grade educations and 8th grade educations who have conquered the poker world. There is no telling why someone is great at reading other people. Some people just are.
I'm so much better off when I trust my instincts. But they're not perfect.
Every poker player has ups and downs because luck is also involved. When a great poker player smashes, he's making the right moves and making the right reads and he's getting lucky.
There are times when success doesn't make sense on a purely mathematical basis. I've played absolutely perfectly before, put in a masterful performance, and then my perfect play evaporated because one guy lost his mind and got lucky. Of course, I've also won that way.
If you are too into the fans and adoration and the world thinking you are the greatest, then you do not perform well.
The more records you put up, the longer they talk about you.
For five or six years, I didn't play in some of the good games leading up to the World Series of Poker, because with so many below-average players there, I reasoned it messed up my game.
In 1987, I wrote a goal sheet. I didn't want to waste my life. I'd dropped out of college, and there was a lot of pressure from my parents. I decided, 'If you're going to do this, you're going to become the best in the world at this.'
It wasn't a popular thing to be a professional poker player in the '80s.
I'm pretty tall, and I'm always dressed in black.
What you see on a lot of televised poker is highlight-reel poker. That's why I used to like 'Poker After Dark' so much. It used to catch us playing almost every single hand... It is more of a grind than people think.
I wanted to become good at golf because I saw a lot of really successful people being good at it - and I planned on being successful.
Most pro athletes are super competitive, super clutch, and they don't want to lose at anything.
When strangers walk up to me and want to play golf for money, I worry. I wonder why they're coming to me, and I begin asking questions: When did you start playing? What's your best score? Are you playing your best golf right now? Where do you play? Usually I can tell if they're lying.
Keeping my emotions in check translates to me playing a lot better.
I think the key to poker is being steady and giving yourself a chance to win every tournament.
When I started playing, I saw a lot of people who were 45 and unhappy. I told myself I'd never be in a position where I had to play all the time. And I haven't been.
Sometimes when you look back, you think I wish I would have played this hand differently or that hand differently. But then you have to understand that you can't go back and to focus on the present. Whether or not you're applying the lessons you've learned from mistakes you've made in the past.
I bought a midnight blue Porsch with a whale tail when I was winning big one time in L.A. That car was fast, fast, fast!
My wife is incredibly supportive of me.
I act the way I act and I'm not proud of it.
If you read people great then you can become a great No Limit Hold 'Em player.
Through all the craziness, what I know is that I'm a good husband and a good father and I do a great job with my kids.
I wanted to be famous and I wanted to make a fortune, and I've done that.
There is your persona and then there's the real you. I was living inside my persona too much.
I have a super-balanced life, and I'm a super balanced guy.
I'm the good guy, I'm a family guy.
I'm trying to make history. I've always put history above money.
If I'm going to play without any rest I might as well not play at all. I rest a lot but I work a lot too.
If you play professionally, you can expect to go broke at some point.
When I lose a big pot, I go a little crazy.
I've been an idiot at the poker table for a long time.
Just because you're sitting at a poker table with some guy doesn't give him the right to say whatever the hell he wants about the way you live your life.
On the road, I have all these celebrity superstars tell me how great I am and how much they like my style.
Models are interested in me, mostly because of my 'bad boy of poker' image.
Here I am getting $50,000 for personal appearances. Everyone wants a piece of me. But my kids think no one could possibly think Dad is cool.