He Knows When To Hold 'em

College proved no different from high school, although the stakes in the after-class poker games were significantly higher. By his junior year Phil was often winning several hundred dollars a night from a high-rolling group of Madison-area players. In 1987, in a big game in La Crosse, he pocketed $7,500. He was 21 years old. "The next day," Hellmuth recalls. "I dropped all my classes and never went back."

Instead, he made a pilgrimage to poker's holy land, Las Vegas, and started gambling with the game's big guns. The world's most publicized card event, the no-limit Hold 'Em tournament at the-World Series of Poker, is held at Binion's Horseshoe casino each May. It is a grueling competition in which 200 or so people pay a $10,000 entry fee and play poker—with no limit on the amount that can be bet—until every last dollar is in one person's hands. In 1989, after some success in smaller Las Vegas tournaments, Hellmuth found himself seated at the final table of the World Series, going head-to-head with two-time defending champion Johnny Chan. The 40-minute battle ended when Hellmuth made a swashbuckling $1 million raise, won the hand and became the world champion at the age of 24.

Though he has suffered some reversals of fortune in the last five years, including a six-month, $400,000 losing streak during 1991, Hellmuth is still very much in possession of his unofficial title. The biggest changes have come in his personal life. In 1990 he married Kathy Sanborn, a psychologist, and they have two sons, Phillip, 3, and Nicholas, 1. Having a family has subdued Hellmuth. He plays cards about 100 nights a year and spends the rest of his time being a father. Remove Hellmuth from a card room these days, and he becomes charming, amicable and amazingly mellow.

Still, the top pros who know Hellmuth only as an obnoxious competitor would like nothing more than to make him cat every irritating word he has ever uttered. And at the Diamond Jim tournament his rivals got their chance. After a second successful jamming of the pot, Hellmuth tried the ploy for a third consecutive hand—and was beaten. He slammed his cards on the table and began to exchange insulting remarks with his opponent, each one calling the other an——.

Within a few hands Hellmuth was out of chips. He stormed from the room and disappeared until the next day's event, and the place once again sounded like a poker hall, chips clinking, cards rustling, everyone speaking in whispers. As Hellmuth departed, some of the best poker players in the world could not maintain their poker faces: The corners of their mouths curled upward as they began to smile.

But Hellmuth, as he almost always does, got the last grin. By the time the 17 events in the Diamond Jim had concluded, Hellmuth had won a total of $50,000, leaving most of the other players trying to figure out how to beat the Kid.