Hellmuth Says He Will Rewrite His WSOP Schedule for Bracelet No. 24
After falling one spot short of bracelet No. 18, he wants more no-limit hold’em and PLO on his path to 24.
Phil Hellmuth says he is ready to reshuffle his World Series of Poker calendar and spend more of the next four or five years on poker as he chases bracelet No. 24. The push comes after he fell one spot short of his 18th bracelet this summer.
In an emotional July 15 interview with PokerNews, Hellmuth said the runner-up finish in Event #99, the $5,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, still hurt. He earned $464,286 for second place and said there is a big difference between first and second, adding that he would be thinking about the result for months.
Hellmuth also said his sons Phillip III and Nick were there for the heads-up match against Darren Rabinowitz, and that having them on the rail meant the world to him. The family presence mattered to him because his parents had been there for a large share of his earlier bracelet wins, and now his sons were seeing him make another deep run.
Speaking later to PokerOrg soon after the near miss, Hellmuth said the loss had not dented his motivation. He said criticism gives him more fuel, after Shaun Deeb said late last year that he did not think Hellmuth would win another bracelet and that the game had passed him by.
Hellmuth’s answer is to play more events and rewrite his WSOP schedule so he can enter the right tournaments. He said he wants more no-limit hold’em and more pot-limit Omaha, especially formats where he can sit for hours without cards, make final tables, and use his reading ability. He also said people have forgotten how good he is in no-limit hold’em and argued he can still win any no-limit tournament in any structure on any day.
Hellmuth said he played only two PokerGO Studio tournaments last year, but this year he went there early, made a final table in his first event, and reached another in his third. In the Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship, he said he could see the mistakes other players were making and believed he should have finished in the top three.
The wider WSOP backdrop has also changed. PokerNews reported in February that the 2026 festival ran from May 26 to July 15, included 100 live bracelet events, and put more emphasis on Pot-Limit Omaha, with events such as a $1,500 Double Board Bomb Pot PLO and a $1,500 Pick Your PLO. In a November 2025 interview, Hellmuth also complained that too many bracelets were being awarded each year and said he would stop playing if the trend kept going.
