The greatest player in World Series of Poker is Phil Hellmuth. If you don’t believe that, just ask him, he’ll tell you. But Hellmuth has been playing now for 30 years and has accomplished things that a lot of players will only ever be able to dream about: 14 WSOP bracelets and over $21 million in lifetime earnings. As the WSOP Main Event approaches, we take a bit of a dive into the numbers beyond 14 and 21 though.

That Very First WSOP Cash

In 1988, a 23-year-old Hellmuth was at Binion’s Horseshoe Casino for the WSOP. In Event #6, a $1,500 Seven Card Stud tournament, Hellmuth outlasted 198 other players to make the final table. He eventually had to settle for a fifth place finish as Lance Hilt went on to win the bracelet in the only WSOP event he ever cashed in. Hellmuth walked away with $15,450 for his first WSOP in the money finish.

Nobody Has Been a Bridesmaid More Than Him

Everybody knows that Hellmuth has won 14 WSOP bracelets in his career. He’s also managed to finish second ten different times – two more than anybody else. His first runner-up finish came in a $2,500 Limit Hold’em event in 1992. That tournament is more notable for another reason though. It was the first bracelet win for future Poker Hall of Famer Erik Seidel.

He Lives For the Bracelet Chase

Possibly Nobody lives more for the WSOP than Hellmuth and the disproportionate numbers he’s put up with a bracelet on the line prove it. He’s won $14,246,270 – 66.63% of his total earnings – in WSOP, WSOP Europe and WSOP Asia-Pacific events. He’s cashed 126 times in those events, making up 43.36% of his 291 career cashes. His 14 wins account for 25.92% of his 54 career wins.

World Poker Tour M.I.A.

The last time Hellmuth cashed in a World Poker Tour event, the Apple iPad had been out for just three weeks, people were playing online poker across the United States and nobody hated Chris Ferguson or Howard Lederer. It was the 2010 WPT World Championship at the Bellagio and Hellmuth finished seventh, narrowly missing out on a final table. He’s managed 12 WPT cashes, zero wins, zero runner-ups and just six top 10 finishes.

2016: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

One of the weirdest years on record for Hellmuth was 2016. He cashed just five times – his lowest total since 1997, but managed to take earn $1,669,246 thanks to his fourth place finish in the Super High Roller Bowl. That cash made up all but $69,246 of his earnings. It was also a year in which he booked no wins, just the seventh time in his 30 year career that’s happened.

The Classic and the Bright Lights of Hollywood

Sure, the WSOP is where Hellmuth puts up the biggest numbers in every single category, but he also manages to have real success at the Commerce Casino’s L.A. Poker Classic. Over his career he’s put up 16 cashes at the LAPC and in 15 of them he finished in the top 10, eight times in the top two and five of them wins, the most he’s had in any one series or festival outside of the WSOP. His wins there include a No Limit Deuce to Seven (1992), No Limit Hold’em (1998), Omaha Hi-Lo (2003), Eight Game Mix (2012) and Omaha/Stud Hi-Lo (2017).

Seven Figure Scores

Just four times in his career has Hellmuth his a seven-figure score. The first came in 2011 when he finished runner-up to Brian Rast in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship for $1,063,024. He had two in 2012, first in the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop where he finished fourth and walked away with $2,645,333. The second came when he won the WSOP Europe Main Event for $1,333,841. Those two scores pushed his earnings in 2012 to $4,394,824 – by far his best year ever, he’s never earned more than $1.7 million in any other year.The fourth million dollar came in the previously mentioned 2016 Super High Roller Bowl.

This is The Main Event

The WSOP Main Event is clearly poker’s biggest stage and nobody has taken more advantage of that than Hellmuth. Whether it’s agreeing to shave his head on ESPN if Robert Varkonyi won in 2002 or any one of the grand staged entrances he’s made. But don’t ever let that hide the fact that he’s also cashed in the event eight different times for $1,333,618 in earnings.

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Year	Place	Earnings
1988	33	$7,500
1989	1	$755,000
1997	21	$21,200
2001	5	$303,705
2003	27	$45,000
2008	45	$154,400
2009	436	$25,027
2015	417	$21,786