Heart Scare Doesn’t Halt Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth took to Twitter to reveal he has a heart condition, the 14-time WSOP bracelet winner downplaying the arrhythmia which struck on Sunday morning and lasted almost 48 hours - Hellmuth going straight from his sickbed to the WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic in Vegas.

AFib or Atrial fibrillation to give it its full name, is ‘a quivering or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications,’ according to the American Heart Association, the health organisation stating that ‘at least 2.7 million Americans are living with AFib’, leaving Hellmuth with plenty of company but scaring his friends.

Doyle Brunson, no stranger to serious medical conditions himself having survived more than a dozen bouts of cancer in his long career, pleaded with Hellmuth to take it more seriously than the throw away ‘not a big deal’ of Hellmuth’s initial post…

Not put off by his heart problems, Hellmuth emerged from 36 hours  in bed and made his way straight  to the WPT Bobby Baldwin Classic at the Aria, and is currently running deep in the $10k buy-in event…

…which, with 162 entries producing a $1,555,200 prizepool, has the likes of 2015 WSOP Main Event champ Joe McKeehen, high stakes crusher Stephen Chidwick and recently-married Kitty Kuo Thomas all still in the mix.

With the World Series of Poker on the near horizon, it’s unlikely that Hellmuth will be slowing down his poker game any time soon, despite Hall of Famer Linda Johnson joining Doyle Brunson in the worry over big Phil’s health…

Brunson, it should be mentioned, has actually seen players die of heart attacks at the poker table and the 2016 WSOP featured the amazing story of Nithin George Eapen who suffered an NSTEMI heart attack while playing the $1500 Monster Stack NLHE event. He returned home after surgery, but persuaded his doctor and wife to allow him to return to Vegas for the Main Event!