Tournament: Hellmuth makes WPT Shooting Stars Final Table

Veteran poker pro Phil "Poker Brat" Hellmuth has enjoyed unprecedented success at the World Series of Poker. He won the WSOP Main Event in 1989; at the time, the youngest player to do so, and has another ten championship bracelets in his collection.

One of the few accolades that has eluded him in his long and illustrious career is a win on the World Poker Tour. This weekend, he has the chance to add a WPT title to his resume.

Hellmuth is in second chip position behind online pro Andy Seth at the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star US$10,000 no-limit Texas Hold'em event. The tournament attracts stars from the worlds of poker, sports and entertainment, with tournament organizers providing a US$5,000 bounty on each star for the player who knocks them out of the event. Out of the fifty designated bounties available at the start of the tournament, only Hellmuth's remains unclaimed.

Hellmuth has made two earlier WPT final tables: the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods in 2003 and the LA Poker Classic in 2008. He has never finished higher than third place in and WPT event in his career. However, he may have a "home field" advantage in this event. His home in Palo Alto, California is only a few miles away from the Bay 101 Casino in San Jose.

Hellmuth will start the final table in second place with 1.43 million in chips, well behind Seth's 2.16 million. Fellow veteran Hasan Habib will start in fifth place with only 455,000 in chips. The winner will take home US$878,000 and a free entry into the US$25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas later this spring.

If Hellmuth can take down his first career WPT title, he will pass fellow WSOP Main Event champion Scotty Nguyen for fourth-place on the all-time tournament money list. Phil Ivey currently sits atop that list, followed by Daniel Negreanu and 2006 WSOP champion Jamie Gold.

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