Hellmuth Widens His Lead on Ivey, Chan and Brunson
Published on 2018-07-12 21:32:00
Phil Hellmuth did it again on Thursday night, taking down the $5,000 No Limit Hold'em event for $485,082 to collect his 15th World Series of Poker bracelet. With his victory, Hellmuth widened his lead over Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan, all of whom sit at a total of 10 bracelets.
With Doyle Brunson recently announcing his retirement and Johnny Chan playing sparingly, Phil Ivey looks to be the only player that has a chance of catching Hellmuth anytime soon. Having said that, other issues (lawsuits involving Crockfords and the Borgata, amongst other things) have distracted Ivey recently, and his last bracelet came in 2014.
For everything that is said about Hellmuth, he has continued to show that he can play at a very high level. After all, four of his bracelets have come in the last six years, and you can argue that the competition has improved immensely over the past decade or so. Despite all of his bluster, Hellmuth is still obviously looking to improve his game and every opportunity and adapt to compete with the younger lions of the poker world.
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It was certainly a hectic World Series of Poker for Hellmuth this year.
In addition to his 15th bracelet, Hellmuth was also caught up in a number of different controversies.
To start, there was an uproar after Hellmuth erupted during a three-way hand. Many pros, such as Justin Bonomo, felt that Hellmuth had unfairly influenced the action by acting emotionally during the hand and that he deserved a penalty. In fact, the blowback was so severe that Hellmuth offered to buy the impacted player into next year's World Series of Poker main event.
In addition, Hellmuth also came under attack for defending Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and selling part of himself at a 1.8 markup for the $10,000 NLHE Super Turbo Bounty event.
In short, Hellmuth found himself on the defensive a great deal this summer, though he did manage to silence his haters with another bracelet win.
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Filed Under: World Series of Poker
