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Phil Hellmuth is the World Series of Poker player in history and it’s not even particularly close as Hellmuth has 17 WSOP gold bracelets and Phil Ivey in second place has 11. It’s not unreasonable to take it one step further and say that Hellmuth is the greatest tournament poker player of all time and he’s certainly in the discussion of ‘best players of all time’ outside of tournaments.
Hellmuth has the resume to back those claims up. So when Sean Perry, who calls himself the ‘best bettor in the world,’ challenged Hellmuth to a heads-up match after Perry dipped his toes back into the World Series of Poker, Phil put Perry in his place pretty quickly.
Firstly though, we should at least acknowledge that ‘best bettor in the world’ is an incredibly subjective claim. It’s also a claim that didn’t hold water last December after Perry was down to the final 10 in the famous Circa Survivor Pool and all survivors were offered the chance to ‘chop the pot’ and Perry was the only one of 10 that refused.
At the time, Perry said “With all respect, I’m the best bettor in the world. There’s no way I’m ever chopping. I wish you guys all the best. I’ll see you at the finish line.” Naturally, he had the Broncos that week who lost to New England and the ‘best bettor in the world’ walked away with nothing.
Sean Perry returned to the World Series of Poker Main Event last weekend and quickly called out Phil Hellmuth in an interview with Jeff Platt:
It's the return of @seanperrywins to the WSOP…
And he calls out @phil_hellmuth once more! pic.twitter.com/18zqFNXr79
— Jeff Platt (@jeffplatt) July 8, 2024
It didn’t stop there. Sean Perry started sending messages to Phil Hellmuth on X (formerly Twitter) trying to get ‘The Poker Brat’ to play him heads-up, which Perry previously had the chance to do but passed on the $800K buy-in:
X
Sean Perry is far from a slouch at the poker table. He has $870K in WSOP earnings and a total of $6,847,297 in live poker earnings. But he’s no Phil Hellmuth. Perry has never won a WSOP event and his best finish was 4th in the 2021 $100K buy-in High Roller.
It’s evident Sean Perry is rich and can afford a million dollar heads-up match but it’s also evident that Phil Hellmuth tried to make this happen before and Perry declined. Now he’s back on X like a keyboard warrior trying to come at Hellmuth and there’s really not much incentive at all for Phil to respond unless he gets (1) the apology and (2) gets to choose the time and place for the heads-up match.
And that’s not say that Sean Perry couldn’t win a heads-up match against Phil Hellmuth. It’s certainly possible he could. But after declining the match in 2021 then going off on X with a challenge, Perry deserves nothing from Phil without Hellmuth first getting respect.