Nobody Moves The Needle In Poker Like Phil Hellmuth...But Is He Good For The Game?

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This week on Cracking Aces we talked about the Phil Hellmuth/Ninja/MrBeast high stakes poker stream from the other day. The game caused waves both in and outside of the poker world, as some of the biggest content creators in the world (holy shit MrBeast is SO FAMOUS) sat down for a friendly $100/200 game...which was basically hijacked by Phil Hellmuth's classic antics. But this time people were fucking pissed at Phil- this game was probably the most watched poker game in over a decade, and he was...how do I put this nicely...obnoxious. And I'm a Phil guy. Always have been. But boy was he an asshole in this game.

But the question is- is it good for poker? I go back and forth. Every form of entertainment needs the heel. The bad guy. The villain. Phil plays that role perfectly. Like, if he wasn't such an annoying prick all night, we wouldn't have gotten this sort of clip:

But is it sometimes just too much? Is him berating the amateurs, going on and on about how he's "Phil Fucking Hellmuth, the greatest of all time" just tiring when everyone else is there for a good time? And the influencers got tired of his schtick fairly quickly, but they were nice about it (probably because Phil ended up losing $100k in the game).

I like Phil off the table. I like him a lot. But I understand people who are sick of his on the table antics and nonsense. But then again, in today's world of solvers and GTO, a lot of the high stakes pros would sit there quietly, which is why Phil gets invited to these sorts of games. I mean he's kept himself in the spotlight for 30 years, nearly impossible to do in the poker world. So he's clearly doing something right.

Would appreciate if everyone could check out this week's episode of Cracking Aces, means a lot if you could subscribe and maybe even click the 5 stars.

And for the love of god, will someone get in Joe Biden's ear and get him to legalize online poker in all 50 states? The poker boom 2.0 wants to happen, we just need people to be able to play!