ABCNEWS.com welcomes poker champ Phil Hellmuth! Thanks for joining us. Phil, do you still consider yourself the best player in the world? If not, who is?

Well, now that's a difficult first question, isn't it? Let me see if I can politely dance around this. There are those who consider me the best poker tournament player in the world, and for those who don't, you have TJ Cloutier and Johnny Chan, and maybe John Bonetti. Then there's Men "The Master" Ngyuen, and maybe also Tony Ma. I'm not the only one on the top of the poker world, if I am at the top of the poker world at all.

How do you practice to keep yourself sharp so you can continue to win?

You know, in 1999, I spent the month of August playing in poker tournaments every day, trying to work on my game. I also sometimes play poker at www.ultimatebet.com, in order to stay sharp, since I really don't play much poker at all in the Bay area anymore.

Do you find that long matches really tax your brain and that you play worse over time?

I would say "yes." I think that one of my weaknesses, and the weakness of a lot of poker players, is stamina. I mean, I'm in really good physical condition. I just mean that I can't play at the level that I'm capable of playing at as long as I'd like to. Then again, the level I like to play at is pretty intense.

Scott in our audience writes: "If playing cards revolves so much around the luck of the draw, how can one player be 'better' than another?"

Well, Scott, poker is a game of skill and luck. If a great player gets lucky, then that great player will usually win the poker tournament that he is in. If a really good player gets lucky, they usually will not win the poker tournament that they are in, and if a bad player, or a marginal poker player, gets lucky, they still have no chance to win a poker tournament. So I like to think, if I can get a little bit lucky on a particular day, watch out!

Bill Greenleaf writes: "Phil, Five Card Stud used to be the game of choice for most poker players. It was replaced with Seven Card Stud, and now Hold 'Em is the most popular game played. How much life do you think is left in Hold 'Em before it is replaced by a different game?"

Texas Hold 'Em is a game in which everyone is dealt two cards face down, and then there is a round of betting, and then three more cards are flipped face up, which everyone can use in the middle of the table. Then there is another round of betting. Then a fourth card is slipped up into the middle of the table and you have your third round of betting. And then, finally, a fifth card is placed up in the middle, and you have your final round of betting.

For the viewers out there that don't know a lot about poker, Texas Hold 'Em is the game in which all of the major poker tournaments have been played, including every world championship since the early 1970s. Hold 'Em is fast, Hold 'Em has a lot of skill involved, and most of all, Hold 'Em is very exciting. I see Texas Hold 'Em being the world championship game at least for the next thirty or forty years. Some people thought that Omaha was the game of the future in the late 1980s. Now, we are into the future, and we find that Hold 'Em is still the game. Long live Hold 'Em!

Per Kvalsten writes: "I feel the weakest part of my game is my ability to read other players. Can you give me suggestions on how to develop this skill?"

Absolutely. Reading players is an innate ability that we all have. It's just a matter of practicing that ability and perfecting that ability. Next time, when you're at the poker table and you're not playing a hand, try to guess what the other players' hands are. Are they weak? Are they strong? Are they bluffing, or do they have the real deal? You will find that, through practice, your reading abilities will become sharper. Also, let me get a cheap plug in for my poker book, called Let's Play Poker. Of course, you won't be able to buy Let's Play Poker until the end of this year.

Lee Berg writes: "After learning the mechanics of a poker game, like Texas Hold 'Em, what's the best way to learn what hands are 'good hands' (to bet on) at each stage of the game?"

There are a lot of books on poker out there right now. All of these books talk about patience. You can see that if someone were to play every single hand in a Texas Hold 'Em game, they would get massacred. So, in poker, the number one rule for amateurs is "Patience is a virtue." Learn what the strong hands are, and learn to throw away the really tempting sort of junky type of hands, like 7-9 of clubs. Tempting as the 7-9 of clubs may be, it's like a potato chip; once you eat one chip, you can't stop eating, and once you start playing "junk" hands in poker, you can't stop playing them!

John Connor writes: "How do you handle the lows of the life of a gambler? It must be very hard when you are on a down cycle."

Absolutely. Through some pretty hard lows in my life, I always remembered that I was building character. The lows made me feel like I was not a great poker player. The lows made me realize that my life wasn't about just poker. As important as poker is to me, going through the lows made me realize that my family is much more important to me.

I think that that's the cycle of life that anyone who steps into a great amount of success at an early age is going to experience, and they go one of two ways. I think most people, when they experience their down sides — because it's not all about being straight up — become much more deep and interesting and reflective. I hate the lows in poker, but I love the way that they helped me become a better man.

Sean Mcguiness asks: "Do you have any suspicions that you or your colleagues may be compulsive gamblers?"

Not most of them. Most of the top professional poker players stick exclusively to poker, and they look at it as a job, as a business. However, there are some that love to play craps and blackjack and bet horses and bet sports in a very compulsive manner. Some great poker players keep themselves broke because they can't get away from some of these "leaks."

A lot of successful people in life today have leaks. We have doctors and lawyers that think they understand the stock market, but they lose a lot of money there. We have presidents of companies and CEOs who like to go out and drink all night and perform badly for their company, costing their company, ultimately, many millions of dollars. Unfortunately, poker is a cash game, and a lot of players live in Las Vegas, which is aptly called "sin city," and are constantly surrounded by temptations. So I think that leaks are more magnified in poker than in life.

Nate asks: "To what extent do you think the 'gambling' lifestyle (if there is such a thing) contributed to the death of three-time WSP champion Stu Ungar (who you've probably played against a few times)?"

First of all, Stu Ungar was an utterly great poker player. He had so much talent for poker, it was unbelievable. Unfortunately for Stu, he was so good with a deck of cards in his hands, that he was winning five-figure numbers playing Gin with players on the East Coast when he was 14 years old. I believe Stu Ungar had a tougher time than most because of all the cash that he won at such an early age. Imagine yourself with unlimited funds when you were 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. Would you have been able to avoid all of the things that people like to do at those ages?

I think cocaine was big when Stu was young. I think once he found drugs and alcohol, it was very hard for him to let go. Perhaps, had he started making a lot of money at age 22 or 23, like me, he would have been just wise enough to avoid those temptations. Stu Ungar was in a very tough situation. I'm not sure any of us could have made it through his situation unscathed. Perhaps the boy had too much talent.

Where is your favorite place to play poker? And what is your game of preference?

My favorite place to play poker is Binion's Horseshoe at the World Series of Poker, of course! The Bellagio has a beautiful poker room as far as Las Vegas poker rooms go. The Bicycle Club casino and the Commerce casino in L.A. know how to treat the players. One more: Up here where I live, in the Bay area, the Bay 101 in San Jose is a fun place to play.

My game of preference? Really, I find myself liking more and more of the games these days. However, there's nothing like a good, high-stakes, no-limit Hold 'Em game.

Are there any outstanding women Hold 'Em players on the circuit?

Absolutely. Annie Duke is the all-time leading money winner at the World Series of Poker for Women. By the way, Annie, who was nine months pregnant at the time, finished tenth at this year's world championship in a field of 515 players. Annie Duke is still in her early 30s. Barbara Enright just won a very prestigious award in poker. She won the Best All-Around Player award, which, by the way, was a new PT cruiser, as the best all-around player in the Bicycle Club's "Legends of Poker" tournament in August of 2000. Barbara also has at least one World Series bracelet, and she has been around poker for at least 20 years, so she has the power to stay.

Susie Isaacs has won at least two women's world championships, and is well known for her Seven Card Stud. Kathy Liebert finished about 16th at this year's world championships, and she seems to be one of the top Hold 'Em players around. Gerri Thomas won the Seven Card Stud championship at the World Series of Poker in 2000. Yes, there are many fine women poker players all over the country. I've just named some of the top ten.

Hi Phil. You are so straightforward away from the table, yet I know you're a great 'actor' at the table. I've seen you banter and direct comments at opponents, I assume for information and intimidation. How do you manage and reconcile a deceptive nature at the table, while being so honest and straight otherwise?

(Laughs) I have a reputation for being totally honest and totally straightforward in all of my poker dealings for 15 years. I'm as proud of my perfect reputation in poker as I am of the world championships I've won. Honor means everything to me. When I'm at the poker tables, stuff happens. Sometimes when I'm really trying hard to play my best, someone makes a lot of bad plays against me and gets lucky. For some reason, in the past, this has brought out the "poker brat" side of me. By the way, my autobiography, Poker Brat, is going to market in New York soon. Coauthor Andy Glazer and I are really proud of Poker Brat, and it includes a chapter called "My Night with Matt Damon."

Sometimes at the poker tables, I'm very intense. I'm trying to "look into my opponent's soul." I'm trying to figure out exactly what he has, and exactly why he's betting. Sometimes I talk to my opponents, and they give away key information, which allows me to beat them or outmaneuver them on that pot. I have never intentionally tried to berate someone else; it's usually just a matter of me losing my temper or being frustrated. I don't mind trying to intimidate you, but I don't like it when I berate people, because that crosses the line.

Speaking of Matt Damon, we have this next question from "Amarillo Slim, Jr.:"

Have you seen the poker movie Rounders, starring Matt Damon and Ed Norton, Jr., and if so, what did you think?

I have seen Rounders. I thought it was really cool that my name was mentioned in there. One day, at the World Series, the day before the big tournament, some Hollywood producers came up to pitch this project to me. Being that it was the day before the big one, I kind of blew it off, so they ended up using Johnny Chan in a scene in Rounders, a scene that I would have loved to have had. But I thought it was really cool that my name was mentioned as one of the all-time legends of poker, because I was only 34 at the time.

Matt Damon and Edward Norton came out to play at the World Series of Poker in 1998. I gave them a lesson the day before the event started, and had breakfast with them. That Monday night, the first day, we were all out, so we played a charity event together, and then Matt, Edward and I went out for a nice dinner. Matt and I ended up hanging out kind of partying together 'til around 9 a.m. at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. I was really impressed. I meet a lot of stars and a lot of famous and rich people, but I was really impressed with both Matt and Edward, and could see that they both would be directing movies, and that they'd be around for a long, long time in Hollywood. These guys are both incredibly sharp, and very charismatic. Matt and Edward are a couple of really great guys.

Recently, I went to New York to try for the lead role in a movie called Addison. I didn't get the part, but because people seem to like to see me on TV, I could see myself doing some acting in the future. Currently, I'm being written into two or three movies with a cameo role, and I think that that's really cool.

Sean asks: "When did you start playing professional poker?"

I was 20 years old, going to the University of Wisconsin, when I started playing poker. I guess I never really focused much on my schoolwork, so poker was just another fun distraction for me while I was going to school. I had never really had any money in my life, up to that point, to speak of. I had student loans, like most people that go to school. By the time I turned 21, I had paid off my student loans, and had $20,000 in the bank. $20,000, Wow! I thought that was a pile of money. To me, that was a million, at that point in my life. I still hadn't played poker anywhere but Madison, at this point, but I was having a good time.

When I was 21 and a half, I went to Las Vegas. I lost. I went there 10 times in the next year, and I lost every time. But I didn't always lose my money playing poker; I think I was a bit of a compulsive gambler, losing large amounts of money playing craps and baccarat. By the time I was 23, and even until this day, at age 36, I get slightly sick any time I get near a craps table. I think the fact that I get sick every time I see a craps table or a baccarat table is a very good thing.

About the 11th trip, I started winning money exclusively playing poker, and one day I came home and dropped all my classes. One day after winning $6,500 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, I came back and dropped all of my classes. I said to myself, "There's no way I can make this kind of money with a college degree."

Is there a big underworld surrounding poker like boxing and the mob?

No. Absolutely not. The closest that I have seen to any underworld in poker is when a famous mafia player was playing with us one day at the World Series of Poker, and he had a bodyguard with a gun. (Laughs)

John Guttenberg sends in this comment: "The letter your dad sent you when you won the big one — do you have it framed? It was just plain fantastic!"

Having my father there at the World Series of Poker when I won had to be one of the greatest moments of my life. Imagine, here was a man who hated poker; here was a man who couldn't stand the profession I'd chosen, and the first time he ever went to see me play, he saw me win the World Championship of Poker and $755,000 for first place, with ESPN filming the event, and the press corps knee deep.

The minute after I'd won that thing, and my hands were up in the air, was the best moment of my life, until I got married and had kids. My arm shot up in the air, and within a few seconds I started scanning the room. Here was my father running up the aisle, but remember, there was over a million dollars on the poker table, so the security guard stopped him. I waved my father through, gave him a big hug, and that moment is forever in my mind. It was nice that ESPN caught that moment, so that I can see it again on the videotapes.

I remember about an hour later, there was my father, standing there, surrounded by the press corps, answering questions about me. I was also surrounded by the press corps, and I just looked over at him and smiled.

Is fame something that ever crosses your mind? Do you ever fancy that the names of skilled "gamblers" may, for some reason, be known in the same way we know of kings and sports heroes today? Ungar, Uston...Hellmuth? I personally don't think it would be vain for you to wonder about this kind of topic.

We are absolutely headed in that direction. Poker is getting an unprecedented amount of press lately. With the introduction of cameras under the table, poker tournaments are being shown live, now, all over the world. Would this be a crazy thing to say? I think poker will become bigger than the PGA tour, but it might take 20 years. After all, the PGA tour in general is a bunch of white men between the ages of 28 and 44, other than Tiger Woods.

In poker's world championships, everyone can play. We have seventy-two-year-old Italian men like John Bonetti, we have 30-year-old women like Annie Duke, we have 23-year-old black men like Philip Ivy, and we have 72-year-old men like Amarillo Slim. We have people playing poker in our world championships of all races, religions, nationalities, and ages.

Poker will become huge, and the poker players at the top will become well known. I'm already signing autographs at least a couple of times a week all over the world. It's hard for me to go into a restaurant in Palo Alto and not have someone know who I am. I'm not sure that I will like being famous if I become famous. But I do know this; if I become famous, the endorsements will roll in!

Phil, I can remember watching you play 10 or 12 years ago at the old Stardust poker room before you won your first World Series of Poker championship. I'm curious to know if you feel the poker scene has changed much in the last 10 years.

Yes, it's definitely changed. By the way, I was playing poker at the Stardust more like 14 years ago. I look back fondly on those times when I played poker at the Stardust, when I was up and coming and had a lot to prove to everyone. The poker scene has definitely changed since then. Right now, as we speak, there are two different cities that will have a $2,000-4,000 limit game tonight. You will see one at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and you will see one at the Hustler Club, Larry Flynt's club in L.A.

Tonight in poker, some people will win or lose a quarter of a million dollars. So, poker's become better, and more well known, and more accessible. I mean, did you know, yesterday, I was playing in a charity poker tournament at www.ultimatebet.com? Also, I'm doing a charity poker tournament, for the second year in a row, for my son's school (it raised $6,000), and I'm about to do a tournament for the Child Abuse Prevention Center, for which my wife is a board member, which is expected to raise over $10,000.

All of this tells me that poker is becoming more of an acceptable, intriguing, fascinating game for the American public. Who could have imagined some of the top players doing four or five charity events a year? Who could have imagined people playing poker online, from their house, at the same stakes that I used to play 14 years ago at the Stardust? Who could have imagined a poker tournament being broadcast live to over 150 countries with cameras under the table, and yet, that's where poker is right now, today!

Do you have any strange or weird stories from gambling?

I do have a strange story to tell, yeah. It happened to me at this year's Tournament of Champions event. I was in the broadcast booth doing a live Internet audio-video broadcast of the Tournament of Champions for pokerpages.com, when a hand came up where I just knew the exact two cards that the man had. I knew that this guy had the exact hand that he had. I knew that the man had "pocket tens" in Texas Hold 'Em. It bothered me so much that four hours later, after the event was over, I went up to this guy and I said, "I know that you had two tens that hand." He flipped out!

I don't know what happened there — I'm not an ESP type of guy *Laughs* Maybe somewhere in my mind I could have guessed that he had nines, tens or Jacks, based on the way he looked. I was too far away from the table to see the hand. Nothing like this has happened to me before, although sometimes I get really strong reads on people. But to think that he had exactly two tens kind of made me wonder, what the heck is going on!

Does online poker have a future?

Absolutely. Ultimatebet.com is going to have a World Championship of Online Poker event in 2002. I think that the press is going to eat this up. Imagine playing a World Championship of Poker at your office, or on your cell phone at the beach, or in the comfort of your own living room, or even, God help us, as you're driving to the office, on your cell phone. Online poker will continue to grow and it will bring new players into casino-style poker.

Do you know the number one reason why my parents, despite being MY parents, didn't play poker until this year? I mean, they have a world champion poker player for a son, and they don't even play for 10 years? It turns out that they were a little afraid of the format of the game. They just didn't want to look bad. It wasn't the money; they just didn't want to slow things up and look bad. Right now, you can go to ultimatebet.com, play Texas Hold 'Em right there, and see how easy the game really is to play. You can bet, you can raise, you can fold, all in your turn, but you will find that Texas Hold 'Em is a very easy game to play. Not necessarily to play well, but just to play.

What's your ultimate goal in this occupation? Is there a top dollar amount you want to win?

It's a good final question. What is my ultimate goal? I'm glad you asked that question, because my number one business goal in life is to become the best poker player of all time. In order to become the best poker player of all time, I have to win all of the poker "majors." Right now, the poker "majors" are being defined by the Phil Hellmuth players panel. Right now we have defined the most prestigious 50 poker tournaments in the world. You can see a list of them at philhellmuth.com.

You will notice that in the top 33 most prestigious poker tournaments in the world, 20 or so of them are World Series of Poker events. Right now, Doyle Brunson has eight World Series of Poker bracelet titles. I have six. Johnny Chan has six. Doyle Brunson is 67 years old. I'm 36 years old. And Johnny Chan is 43 years old.

I figure that if I can win 24 total World Series of Poker titles, that I will become the best poker player of all time, and set the bar very high for those who would come after me. I'm trying to become the Jack Nicklaus of poker. And if I have to watch Tiger Woods come and break all my records later, so be it. The difference is, Jack Nicklaus can't compete against Tiger Woods right now. I will compete against whoever will be the Tiger Woods in poker, until I'm 80 years old. John Bonetti has won three World Series of Poker championships in his late 60s, early 70s, and it shows me that I could be a force in poker for many more years to come.