In a closet-size makeup room in northwest Minneapolis, one of the world's most successful poker players looks like he wound up on the losing end of a barroom brawl.

Phil Hellmuth's lip is swollen, his eye black and blue and his right arm in a cast up to his shoulder. It's all for effect. But some of his critics would say it's a look Hellmuth is due.

"They think that a lot of the American public doesn't like me very much," Hellmuth says.

Before we tell you why he's in Minneapolis, and why he's sporting the look he is, it helps to have some background about the Wisconsin native known as the "Poker Brat."

A recent on-air outburst on NBC's 'Poker after Dark' is one of the latest in a series of tantrums that gained Hellmuth his bad-boy reputation. Following a string of profanities, Hellmuth stormed off the NBC set after accusing other players of talking while he was trying to think.

Hellmuth's temper belies his idyllic Midwestern upbringing. The oldest of five children, Hellmuth was the son of an assistant dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Phil Hellmuth Sr. was beside himself when Phil Jr. dropped out of U.W. Madison after winning $6,500 at a poker tournament in La Crosse.

"I came back and I wasn't doing very well in my classes," Hellmuth says. "I wasn't attending them, I wasn't studying, and just said, 'The heck with this. There's no way I can make $6,500 in one night if I follow this career track.'"

His father's worries proved to be unfounded. Phil Hellmuth was just 24 when he won his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet, at the time the youngest person ever to do so. The winner's bracelet is the equivalent of gold medal, or a championship ring for the game of poker. The bracelet his brother Dave Hellmuth passed around recently at his Eden Prairie law firm is one of a record 11 world championship bracelets Phil Hellmuth now holds, pushing his career poker earnings to roughly $10 million.

"Now the world's most famous athletes and movie stars want to hang out with you, it's kind of freaky," Hellmuth tells a group of employees gathered to hear him speak at his brother's law firm.

Never short on ego, the Poker Brat boasts of business earnings that exceed those at the poker table. Money made from three books, a syndicated column, a clothing line and assorted other ventures.

Which brings us back to that makeup job in Minneapolis. Hellmuth is the face of the new World Series of Poker video game designed by Activision in Eden Prairie. He came to Minneapolis to shoot the commercials. The makeup is all part of the campaign. Buy the video game and "beat" the brat. Get it. What some have called Hellmuth's childish behavior has become a marketable asset.

"All through the '90s it was a big strike against me," Hellmuth says. "A world champion - which I was in 1989 - should never act that way, you're bad for our sport. Then all of sudden in 2003 the television producers said, 'you're the greatest thing for our sport ever, don't change.'"

Hellmuth, nonetheless, says he's trying to reign himself in. "At some point you want to become a better man, and in trying to become a better man that's something I'd like to lose is that brat."

Sincere? Hard to say. Unless you're better than most of the competitors who've tried to read Phil Hellmuth's poker face.