Poker Place

Phillip ‘Phil’ Hellmouth Jr., still known to many as ‘The Poker Brat’, despite turning 55 in 2019, was born in Madison, Wisconsin. He went to college locally, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before dropping out to focus on his poker activities. In the World Series of Poker (WSOP), Hellmouth earned his first cash as long ago as 1988, when he finished fifth in a Seven-Card Stud Split event at Binion’s, Las Vegas. However, the following year, at the age of 24, he won the WSOP $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship at the same venue, making him, at the time, the youngest player to do so.

That record was beaten by Peter ‘Icegate’ Eastgate, aged 22, in 2008 and again, by Joe ‘The Kid’ Cada, aged 21, the following year, but Hellmouth still holds several WSOP records, including the most WSOP bracelets (15) and the most cashes (137). His victory in the WSOP Europe Main Event in 2012 also made him the only player ever to win the WSOP Main Event and the WSOPE Main Event. Hellmuth was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2007 and currently lies nineteenth in the all-time money list, with just shy of $23 million in live earnings.

For all his success in Texas hold’em and other poker variants, Hellmuth is still prone to foul-mouthed temper tantrums, particularly after a bad beat, and fully deserves his derogatory nickname. He was widely criticised for launching a verbal assault on James Campbell at the 2018 WSOP Main Event, simply because Campbell re-raised, all-in, after – at the time, unbeknown to Hellmuth – flopping a flush draw. As it turned out, Hellmuth folded, but Campbell failed to make his flush and lost the hand to the third player in the hand, Alex Kuzmin.

Massachusetts-born Daniel Colman currently ranks seventh on the all-time money list, with live earnings of just shy of $29 million. His position is thanks, in no small part, to the second largest payout in poker tournament history, $15,306,668, which Colman took home after winning the World Series of Poker (WSOP) ‘Big Drop for One Drop’ tournament in 2014. In fact, 2014 proved to be a seminal year for the 23-year-old Colman, who collected four titles, including the European Poker Tour (EPT) Super High Roller event in Monte Carlo and the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood. Nevertheless, Colman caused controversy by flatly refusing to give interviews after Big Drop for One Drop and later calling poker ‘a harmful game’.

Colman began playing poker as a 17-year-old, in online heads-up sit-and-go tournaments, where he attracted the attention of former hedge fund manager Olivier Busquet, nowadays heralded as one of the best players of that form of poker in the world, who became his sponsor. By his own admission, in 2012, Colman was on the verge of abandoning poker to return to his college studies but, having ‘messed up’ his applications, decided to give the game one last try. The following year, he became the first player of hyper-turbo poker – in which blind levels increase every three minutes or so – in online history to win over $1 million in single calendar year; in fact, in just nine months, Colman amassed a total $1,018,708, before rakeback, on the Pokerstars network.

The main poker event at the WSOP has traditionally gathered thousands of professional punters who wanted to get to the WSOP Main Event every year.

Being the champion of such a special tournament is one of the greatest honours in the world of gambling. This is why the winners of the Main Event will always have a special place in the history of poker.

Hossein Ensan made history in the poker tournament.

Who is Hossein Ensan?

Here are some interesting facts about the man who cashed out a whopping $10 million prize at the final table of the WSOP event in 2019.

This famous German poker player was born in Iran in 1964. At the age of 25, he decided to move to Germany, which has been his home country ever since. Currently, he resides in the city of Munster. Hossein Ensan used to work as a painter before playing poker professionally. He had been playing poker since he was 18, but only began playing professional poker in 2012.

One of the main tournaments won by Hossein Ensan was the seniors’ event at the European Poker Tour in Barcelona. A week later he finished third, scooping as much as €652,000 at the final table in 2014. After his win in Barcelona, he decided to try his luck at the EPT Malta in 2015 and even made it to the final table; but in the end, he finished sixth. His adventures with EPT continued in Prague when he won the main event and bagged €754,000.

The next lucky year was 2017. He became a winner in a WSOP circuit ring in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. After this event, he accumulated around $2,6 million in profits. All in all, he participated in 36 tournaments before his historical win in 2019.

Hossein Ensan’s German and Iranian fans went wild the moment they learned he had won the $10 million prize pool and a golden bracelet worth $500,000.