The Brat Strikes Back

I have been looking forward to hearing Phil ‘Poker Brat’ Hellmuth responding to Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt’s recently released book, “Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth: Correcting the 50 Worst Pieces of Poker Advice You’ve Ever Heard.” Gambling911.com finally made sure I actually am.

Phil 'Poker Brat' Hellmuth

Poker pro and instructor Leatherass’s book was expected to cause some controversy from the first moment, but the Poker Brat had not taken notice of it for almost two weeks. Gambling911.com, however, questioned him via his Facebook page: "Phil, what is your reaction to Dusty Schmidt's new book claiming you don't know anything about poker?""If I do not know anything about poker, then Michael Jordan doesn't know anything about basketball," he replied.

Most sites criticise Schmidt as somebody with no championship titles at all insulting Hellmuth who, on the other hand, has the most WSOP bracelets in poker history. Although this argument has some truth, I should like to remember that Leatherass has never had a downswing so far, winning over $4 million in total, while the Brat has not been able to get near a final table seat of a major event in many months now, except perhaps the $1,500 PLO Hi/Lo 8 WSOP side event (7th place).

As regards Schmidt, he told Gambling that “I started thinking about all of these things you hear people say on TV and got an idea to do a book based on correcting misconceptions. We start each chapter with a misconception and move on to things loosely related to that. As we were going though the misconceptions we had, we realized that Phil Hellmuth dominated the list.”

While waiting for any more comments from either side, I may devote some thoughts to the effect of some controversy on the marketing of a brand new release...