Phil Hellmuth was born and raised in Madison Wisconsin where his father was a university professor. Hellmuth himself would attend the University of Wisconsin which was where he got his start playing poker. After becoming a regular winner against his school mates Hellmuth decided to drop out of school and focus on becoming a professional poker player. To this end he started entering a number of tournaments and soon found success. In fact he became the youngest player to win the World Series of Poker main event when he was just twenty four years of age.
After that first win at the World Series of Poker Hellmuth continued to enter and win tournaments. In fact he has won more tournaments than any other player including a record eleven World Series of Poker bracelets. As a result Phil Hellmuth can lay claim to being the greatest tournament player in the world.
Although Phil Hellmuth has been a very successful tournament player he has also been a controversial one. In large part this is because of his behaviour, he is often loud and he throws fits when things don't go his way. In addition he is not lacking in confidence and he will happily tell anybody who will listen that he is the greatest player in the world. This behaviour has made him popular with television viewers and he has certainly been a big part of the reason that poker has become so popular but he has also tended to alienate the the other professional players. As a result of this Phil Hellmuth has probably been criticized for his perceived short comings more than any other player.
The biggest criticism of Phil Hellmuth as a poker player is that he can only play one variant of the game. Unlike virtually everybody else who has one multiple World Series of Poker bracelets all of Hellmuth's wins have been in Texas hold'em. While one could certainly argue that this makes him the best Texas hold'em player in the world the view that most professionals take is that he is limited as a player. Most of the top pros play a variety of different variants and are successful at all of them.
The other criticism of Hellmuth is that while he is a great tournament player he is not nearly as good as a cash game player. Again this is something that most of the top pros can do, they are equally good in cash games and tournaments. Of course part of the reason for Hellmuth's lack of success in cash games is that he simply doesn't play them very often because he doesn't have the time due to his other business ventures. There is also certainly an element of sour grapes in a lot of the criticism of Phil Hellmuth, not to mention the fact that a lot of people dislike him because of his personality.