Phil Hellmuth Jr. may be the world’s most decorated gambler, and when it comes to what old-timers call the Cadillac of poker — Texas hold ’em — his record 11 World Series of Poker championship bracelets are tantamount to a royal flush. He won the game’s biggest prize, the World Series Main Event, in 1989 and is among the top lifetime money winners, with more than $6 million in World Series event prizes. But last year it all began to fall apart. Hellmuth, 45, lost money and failed to make the final table of even one tournament for the first time in more than a decade. Was it his cards? No, Hellmuth says, pacing the floor of his suite at New York City’s Plaza Hotel. He blames the new breed of math nerd, those guys using a mountain of sortable data from the millions of hands played online to dominate the game. “The reason I won 11 bracelets is my ability to read opponents,” he explains. “These new guys are focused on the math. And they are changing everything.” , 34, is the poster child for amateur success. Moneymaker qualified for the 2003 Main Event through a $39 online satellite tournament and wound up taking home first prize: $2.5 million. That year, ESPN began positioning TV cameras so home viewers could see every player’s cards, which transformed televised poker from unwatchable to gripping — and further fueled the explosion in play. Stories like Moneymaker’s have stoked interest in hold ’em tournaments. At the World Series Main Event, the number of entrants leaped from 839 in 2003 to 8,773 in 2006. With more players and greater visibility, the events are seeing even bigger purses. The top prize at the Main Event jumped from $1 million in 1998 to a peak of $12 million in 2006. The rules of hold ’em are simple enough. Players get two cards down . There is a round of betting. Five more cards will come, face up, and players share those cards. First the dealer turns up three cards , then one card and then a final card . There is betting between each deal. In tournament hold ’em, every player begins with the same number of chips and plays until they are gone — or he gets them all. Certain odds have been committed to memory since the game was invented in Robstown, Texas, nearly 100 years ago. You are 4 to 1 to win with any pair in the hole against a lower pair; you have just a 1-in-15 chance of hitting a flush when dealt two cards of the same suit. See pictures of Las Vegas.
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