Dusty Schmidt talks about his new poker book Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth

Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt and Paul “GiantBuddha” Hoppe know a little something about being highly successful poker players, sought-after poker instructors, and authors; considering both have dominated the online poker tables, are highly successful and in-demand poker coaches at www.dragthebar.com, and have written very well received poker books –Schmidt penned Treat Your Poker Like a Business while Hoppe is the author of Way of the Poker Warrior.

Now Schmidt and Hoppe have teamed up to produce a new poker strategy book that will be available in eBook format on December 6th, 2010, with the title, Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth. The eBook is now avaliable for order at www.DustySchmidt.net and preorders are being taken for the hard-copy version due out in early January.

I was fortunate enough to recently have a chance to talk to Dusty Schmidt about his latest poker text.

Online Poker Examiner: Your new book has a very provocative title, Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth, would you care to detail how you settled on the title?

Dusty Schmidt: I came up with the idea for a book that corrects all of the bad advice out there at the WSOP this summer and began working on the book shortly after I came back from Vegas. I heard so much bad advice and cliches while I was there that I decided to write down all of the ones I had heard and got to about 50 pretty quickly. As we got further along in the writing process, Paul Hoppe and I realized that so many of these crazy pieces of advice were from Phil Hellmuth specifically, and decided to name the book after him.

In a way, we are picking on him a little bit I suppose, but in another way it is tongue in cheek. To us, Phil represents an old school way of thinking about poker that is flawed and so it is kind of an old school versus new school as much as anything.

OPE: Have you ever met Phil?

DS: I have met him once before and seen him around my tables doing his usual grandstanding a fair amount at the WSOP. From what I have heard from people who know him is that once you understand him he is a pretty good guy. That seems to be the way many of his peers perceive him. If it is the case that he is a good guy, then to me it is a shame that he behaves the way he does. While in some ways his antics are great for poker, in other ways it makes us all look like a bit of a joke. I wish this wasn't the case because when it comes to intelligence, I would put people who play poker for a living among the top 2-3% of all other types of jobs in terms of intelligence. Poker teaches people to evaluate problems in a way that when applied universally, can be quite effective.

OPE: Even though the book has yet to be released, I’ve already started seeing some on the periphery of the poker industry accuse you of trying to cash in on Hellmuth’s name, and basically saying that you can’t hold a stick to Hellmuth’s accomplishments. What do you have to say to these people?

DS: We expected to hear plenty of that. I think Gambler911 did an article that pretty much said just that. The thing is that while Phil was once a great poker player, he has not taken the necessary steps to stay on top. In fact, he has fallen behind literally thousands of poker players in terms of his current understanding of how to play poker. If you look at the greats in other sports, they have all done whatever it takes to stay on top. Even with all Tiger has been through, he is probably still the most aggressive player in terms of taking the necessary measures to stay on top. Phil on the other hand, well, he is more inclined to go party with Jay Z or leverage his celebrity by making paid appearances around the world. And the thing is, he deserves to do that if that makes him happy. He has accomplished a lot in poker and I am sure has very little to worry about financially. But what rubs people the wrong way (especially other pros who know the real truth about the current state of his poker game) is that he goes around continually proclaiming that he is "by far the best no limit holdem poker player in the world." And those are his words, not mine. Phil is not anywhere near the best no limit holdem player in the world. In fact, I think he would be lucky to beat micro stakes games online!

I actually think that if Phil were to ever humble himself and embrace all of the techniques that players such as myself use to improve their games and stay on top of the break neck evolutionary pace of the game of poker, that he could once again become one of the better players. He obviously has a strong poker mind and if he figured out how to beat people at one point in time, maybe if he put his heart and soul into figuring it out the way he surely had to have done when he was a kid, then I'm sure he would do just fine. But if he is going to stick to his, "I'm just going to keep laying out the cheese until I spring the trap" mentality then his game will remain hopeless. Phil has no idea how much the aggression in today's games is paper cutting him to death that by the time he goes to spring his trap as he might say, he has already bled to death.

OPE: Do you fear that in a few years the advice you have given in Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth will itself be obsolete, and someone may pen a book titled, Don’t Listen to Leatherass?

DS: It all depends on how quickly the games evolve. I think I can say for certain that my book will almost always be good for low stakes player. Will the advice I give in this book work for high stakes games let's say, 6 years from now. Truthfully, probably not. The entire book will never become obsolete, but it is highly likely that the correct advice I am giving today could become a misconception at some point down the line. That would hold true for anything though. I can't think of any profession where people are buying very old books as their main source of bettering their careers. Very few pieces of advice remain timeless unless the environment surrounding a specific profession remains static, like say some basic science or mathematics.

I actually think the book that stands the best chance of being more or less timeless is my previous book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business. There will be a number of things 10 years from now that are in that book that will become obsolete, but the solid business principles that I apply to my poker game that I have passed on to the readers of that book, will more or less remain timeless.

OPE: What was it like collaborating with your co-author Paul Hoppe?

DS: Without the slightest bit of exaggeration, I can say I consider it a great privilege to not only have gotten the chance to work with Paul, but to get to know him as a person and friend. Paul is as stand up a guy as you could ever meet and we had the luxury of really "getting" each other in a way that few people probably would. Anyway, yeah, Paul's the best.

OPE: Were there any disagreements over certain content between the two of you during the writing process?

DS: Not anything significant. We got along great and since we think alike, we were on the same page so often that if when we did have a few differences of opinion, they were so close that it didn't really matter who we went with because the points were still strong. Like they say in poker, if two great players think two different things about a given hand, chances are you probably can't go too wrong with either.

OPE: What can potential readers of Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth expect to take away from the text?

DS: For starters, I think the reader should have a much better grasp on how to handle a large amount of poker scenarios that come up at the tables frequently. We broke down hands and situations from so many different angles that our hope is that the reader will really start to learn how to think like a pro, which is the main thing when you are trying to learn. No one is ever going to pick up a book that tells you how to play every type of hand from every position on every type of flop against every type of opponent. That book would take a lifetime to write and by the time the person finished it, the games would have evolved so fast that much of the work would be flawed anyway. So the idea is to understand the equations that we use in our heads when we are confronted with situations at the tables and apply that thought process as much as possible. With an understanding of our thought process over enough repetitions, I feel that most people will be in good shape if they can do that.

The other main thing is that this book should help to flush out all of the bad stuff that people have heard over the years that is so likely to be muddling the process of getting from where they are to where they want to be. You have to have a clear and concise vision on how to approach the game of poker if you are ever going to be successful at it. That applies to most things in life as well. You are never going to be a great golfer if as you learn new things, you are still holding on to all of the bad things you have learned. It is best to just flush out all of the junk you don't need and start fresh. We look at this book as a chance for a lot of people to flush out all the junk they have learned and start anew with their pursuit of becoming the best poker player they can be, the right way.

OPE: I’ll finish up with a provocative question myself; what do you think some of the top sponsored pros resumes would look like if they didn’t have an online poker room buying them into basically every major tournament, and had to use their own money?

DS: A lot of them would be broke, no question. The thing is, when it comes to the big names in poker, most are either getting way more respect than they deserve or way less, when it comes to the public's perceptions anyway. Take a guy like Tom Dwan. He has gotten really famous over the years due to being on TV so much, but if you asked the public who was better, Phil Hellmuth or Tom Dwan, I think the smart money says that the public as a whole thinks the answer is Phil! Which is absurd. Phil isn't good enough to carry Tom's card protector with him to the table.

And you have others like Patrick and Ivey that are obviously just flat awesome at poker. But then there are the Matusow's and the Hellmuth's of the world who just aren't in the league of a Tom Dwan or an Ivey. And you have your guys like Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari who get way less credit than a guy like Hellmuth. And they are not the players that say Phil Ivey is, but they are very good and probably deserve a lot more credit than they get. The bottom line is, the pros all know who the truly great players are and while books like mine may make an effort to point out the reality of a guy like Phil Hellmuth, chances are the public will continue to believe Phil when he says he is "By far the best no limit holdem player in the world." That's just the way life works sometimes. When people are on TV a lot, there will always be a large number of people who will think that they are a lot smarter or better than they really are.  
 

You can purchase Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth at www.dustyschmidt.net in addition to Treat Your Poker Like a Business and Way of the Poker Warrior

Read my review of Treat Your Poker Like a Business and my previous Interview with Dusty Schmidt

Read my review of Way of the Poker Warrior and my interview with Paul Hoppe