Phil Hellmuth Quotes

I've been studying, playing, living, breathing poker for eight to nine hours a day. Every day! When I'm between events and in New York, I'm reading, watching videos or live-streaming very good players.

I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.

My biggest problem in live games is that I love the game so much and I don't think I ever met a poker player I didn't fundamentally like - even if they're screaming and they're acting like real jerks.

I am a poker player, but I am not a good poker player. My favorite game is seven card stud, but I'll play hi/lo, Hold 'em, Razz, etc.

Actors should be better poker players. But I think there's actual skill and crazy guts that you need to play poker - this ability to put all this money on the line inside of that game of cards. There's this whole different set of skills that doesn't apply to acting whatsoever.

At my first tournament, about four years ago, I got four twos. Now I have a poker problem. I do win every so often, so that's what keeps me going.

The World Series of Poker was becoming popular, and there were a lot of really bad poker players out there. The misperception was that I was really good, but I just ground it out. It was a good way to make money for Box.

I can't lie... My face always gives me away. I'm also pathetically bad at poker!

I thought poker might be a perfect environment to start to learn probabilistic decision-making, and to live what it means to have skill versus chance and to see how that played out. I would dive in head first into the poker world.

In No Limit Hold'em, much like video games and karate lessons, you need to master one level before you can move on to the next.

Writing about poker is one of my passions.

I don't think anyone could have predicted that I would have gone in less than a year from not knowing how many cards were in a deck to winning a major poker title.

Manipulating people is what's so fun about poker. I love that you can just look into someone's eyes and lie - and it's perfectly acceptable.

You're not supposed to get rattled in poker; you're supposed to remain poker-faced!

Captaincy is 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill. But don't try it without that 10 per cent.

Although I have to say, it's become a lot harder for me since I won the world series because everyone wants to beat me. For example, bluffing is really tough now, because there's always someone who calls me on the off-chance that they'll then be able to say they read a world champion's bluff.

Yes, I think poker really isn't gambling.

I've read the poker books, but at this point, everybody who's playing has read the poker books. I feel like I'm knowledgeable enough to understand what's going on in the game, and I understand why I suck. And I'm not sure if I'll ever rise beyond that to the level where I don't suck.

I like to play cards. I'm not very good, because I don't want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.

I've become addicted to playing poker because you're constantly faced with confusion, and winning is trying to make sense out of nonsense.

Being able to pit your wits against literally hundreds of other people is really exciting and ultimately the biggest single challenge for a poker player.

Poker is a skill game pretending to be a chance game.

It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game.

I basically have paid for a piano and a flat-screen television completely with my poker earnings. I'm pretty good at it.

Games of chance often involve some amount of skill; this does not make them legal. Good poker players often beat novices. But poker is still gambling, and running a poker room - or online casino - is illegal in New York.