Quotes from Phil Hellmuth

What, exactly, am I going to do with my life?

Some players like to add a little more spice to their no-limit Hold 'em game. They add a live blind, also known as a straddle, where the player to the left of the big blind voluntarily puts up twice the big blind before looking at his hole cards. The player in the straddle then has the option to raise it up when the action returns to him.

I have a super-balanced life, and I'm a super balanced guy.

If you're going to just play with patience, you're going to be at the mercy of the cards.

My primary game is to put my chips into the pot only when I'm super-strong. I tend to fold a lot of hands while waiting around for those strong hands to come.

I'm a big believer in the power of your own words.

I wanted to become good at golf because I saw a lot of really successful people being good at it - and I planned on being successful.

There is your persona and then there's the real you. I was living inside my persona too much.

I guess I'm the happiest when I'm picking up my kids from school. The most important things on my list are my wife and kids and my health. Happiness is having a family you love.

I've met some of the most famous celebrities in the world but Michael Phelps was the first person I've ever met with whom I was totally star-struck.

On the road, I have all these celebrity superstars tell me how great I am and how much they like my style.

My wife is incredibly supportive of me.

There are two ways that lack of sleep affects my play: I'll play too many hands and I'll lose the ability to effectively read my opponents.

Shoving with K-Q is a tactic that does work well for Internet players and weak players. In the old days, though, grizzled pros would have eaten up those guys by utilizing the traditional, more conservative style of poker that emphasizes play on the flop.

The flop bet is a useful tactic for both old-school and new-school players because it can be effective if you are strong, weak, or somewhere in between. Betting out weak on a bluff can allow you to pick up an uncontested pot while betting out strong gives you the opportunity to control the size of the pot.

The benefit of fast play is that you'll get players to commit their chips with relatively weak hands since it will be hard for them to believe that you have a strong hand every single time. The downside is that your opponents will raise weak when you have nothing at all, forcing you to fold.

By folding often, I give other players the false impression that I'm a weak player - a player who can be easily bluffed. Trust me; I'm not a weak player.

Ultra-aggressive players have a knack of making otherwise sound players commit huge stacks of chips with relatively weak hands, like A-Q.

Oakley's sunglasses are hot and I feel a little extra cool when I wear them.

Just because you're sitting at a poker table with some guy doesn't give him the right to say whatever the hell he wants about the way you live your life.

Models are interested in me, mostly because of my 'bad boy of poker' image.

It wasn't a popular thing to be a professional poker player in the '80s.

What you see on a lot of televised poker is highlight-reel poker. That's why I used to like 'Poker After Dark' so much. It used to catch us playing almost every single hand... It is more of a grind than people think.

Writing about poker is one of my passions.