Bryn Kenney referring to Phil Hellmuth as a “minor league poker player” didn’t set well with Dan “Jungleman” Cates who defended the “Poker Brat” in a six-minute YouTube video.
The insult directed at the 17-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) champion occurred during an interview on the Digital Social Hour Podcast with host Sean Kelly.
“A lot of people label Hellmuth as the ‘Tournament G.O.A.T.,” but I’d love to hear your opinion. Because he doesn’t really play in the higher stakes tournaments like you do,” Kelly told his guest.
Kenney first mentioned that Hellmuth is the “biggest winning WSOP player,” which is tough to argue given that Hellmuth holds the record for WSOP bracelets and final table appearances by a wide margin.
“He has his career, which is impressive, too,” Kenney said of Hellmuth’s WSOP performance.
But that is where the compliments ended. He went on to attack the 1989 world champion’s performance at the highest stakes.
“He’s played some high rollers and hasn’t really fared very well in them, and you know, when I think about who are the best players in poker, if you’re not competing at the highest level, you can’t really be in contention for it,” Kenney argued.
Kenney then suggested Hellmuth could be “the head of some sub-category that exists somewhere else,” implying that Hellmuth is simply the best World Series of Poker player, not an overall G.O.A.T. He then knocked Hellmuth’s supposed inability to thrive when competing in the “small fields with the best players.”
“If you’re playing against mostly amateur players at the World Series, you’re great at beating the amateur players. It’s like you could be the King of Triple A,” Kenney said.
Bryn Kenney Undermines Phil Hellmuth’s Accomplishments
Jungleman Defends Poker Legend
Cates took to his YouTube channel to defend Hellmuth against the criticism from Kenney, who recently became the first poker player to reach $70 million in The Hendon Mob live tournament cashes. He first knocked down both players a bit by saying “they’re both a little full of s**t.”
“I find it ironic that Bryn Kenney is saying he’s the best in the world for actually what is relatively less of an achievement than what Phil Hellmuth has done,” Cates said, referring to Hellmuth’s WSOP bracelet record compared to Kenney’s Hendon Mob stats. “This is actually what you have to look at. You have to look at how relatively difficult things are, not how absolutely difficult things appear to be.”
Jungleman then made an analogy to defend Hellmuth. He explained that it’s less of an accomplishment to invent a computer now than it was when computers were “hard to build.”
“It was an accomplishment to build a computer when no one knew what the f**k a computer was and someone brought it into existence,” Jungleman continued.
The analogy he’s making is that Hellmuth dominated in poker before solvers, sims, and all the study materials players have at their disposal nowadays. He’s arguing that Kenney has racked up massive results in poker in an era where higher buy-in tournaments are available than in the 1980s and 1990s, and that Hellmuth’s rise to greatness in poker was more difficult.
Hellmuth, as Jungleman mentioned, didn’t just win WSOP bracelets in the pre-GTO era of poker. He’s won three since 2018 and set the single-series record with seven final table appearances at the 2021 World Series of Poker.
Cates admits that Kenney is now a superior poker player to Hellmuth, but he doesn’t approve of Kenney marking himself as the best poker player in the world, using a trick out of Hellmuth’s marketing playbook.
“This is clearly a power play that is complete f*****g b******t, because as someone I claim to be better than Bryn Kenney, actually, I’m wondering why the f**k is this guy able to get away with calling himself the best in the world,” Jungleman said. “I don’t think that’s really right. If I don’t personally think it’s right.”
Jungleman then wrapped up his video by suggesting “the world would be a better place” if those who claim to be the best in the world but really weren’t would stop doing so.
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