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#222 – WSOP #69 – Viva los Muertos, Part II – Hell on Hellmuth
Phil Hellmuth had made the final 29 when I arrived, a half hour before the dinner break. He had about 2/3 the chip average and looked shut down. He was sitting with his arms crossed at the table, shades drawn, motionless.
“I’m just waiting for someone to make a mistake, but ….” He trailed off.
Hellmuth made it through the evening, eventually making the final ten who returned on Tuesday for ESPN’s cameras. Because ESPN was televising the event and missed out on Phil’s eleventh bracelet the week before, they wanted him as part of the broadcast, even if they had to stretch the final table to ten to do it.
During the evening – along with what I observed on Sunday night, at the final table on Tuesday, and from the internet PPV archived broadcast of his eleventh bracelet – I got to watch how a master of small-bet poker operates. Phil Hellmuth exudes danger playing this way, and puts people off balance so badly that they make giant, glaring errors.
On the other hand, I can see how playing this way fuels Hellmuth’s rage when it doesn’t work out. For example, Phil, in position after a board of 8s-5d-7s-5c, calls 25,000. Following a queen on the river, his opponent bets 50,000. After thinking it over for awhile, he calls. The other player shows Q-3 and Hellmuth mucks. Almost immediately, he gets up from the table, angry. “That’s so sick. To bluff off 25,000 with Q-3.”
He complains some more to and about the other player, but ten minutes later apologizes (after he moves all-in with A-K after a raise and picking up a big pot). “I misplayed it. I shouldn’t have let you catch it.”
In another situation, Phil calls with K-J all the way and hits a gut-shot straight draw on the end after a board of 9d-Ah-Qs-Qd-Th. As if it excuses his other outbursts, he tells the players at his table and the other tables that he got lucky. “I berate myself.”
Perry Friedman, sitting at one of the three remaining tables to the left of comedian Norm MacDonald, stops talking to MacDonald and empathizes with Phil. “I’m a master-berater.”
[Shortly thereafter, Norm MacDonald busted out in twenty-first place. Drinking from a dented Coke can while being interviewed by ESPN, he looks a little dazed. But who wouldn’t be? Going deep for the first time at the World Series. Busting out. Watching the Phil Hellmuth Show at the other table and having Perry Friedman on your left.]
Hellmuth’s mea culpa strikes me as a pretty cheap gesture, but brilliant in its way. By making this minor concession – minor because he invariably points out how he USUALLY outplays his opponents and is magnanimous because he is putting those outbursts in perspective – he is taking away from opponents the ability to treat him the way he treats them.
And his opponents let him get away with this. They let him intimidate them by his complaints about their play, but when HE plays the same way and gets lucky, they seem content with his “apology.” It’s amazing that this works for him but it almost always does.
When play ends for the night with ten players remaining, it’s time to bask. Phil, his wife Katy (who looked wiped out), and his agent Brian, sat at a table while at least fifty fans formed an impromptu line for autographs and pictures. As is the case on every occasion I have seen Hellmuth, he was unfailingly gracious and accommodating.
The highlight was when a beautiful woman, a blonde in her early twenties wearing a pink dress and pink sweater, breathlessly approached.
“Phil Hellmuth, you’re my hero. It would be the highlight of my life,” she purred, “if I could get a picture with you.”
Phil’s eyebrows danced at me as he smiled. “Sure,” he said as he stood up.
The woman threw back the sweater to reveal an extremely tight and revealing halter dress. She removed a small camera from her purse and waved it.
“Could you take a picture of us?”
Then she flung the camera AT KATHY HELLMUTH.
I caught Kathy’s glance a moment earlier and she seemed amused. Now, she looked shocked, like the camera was going to detonate.
Having witnessed this wonderful moment – an appetizer, so to speak, to the strangeness razz served up a few minutes later – I thought a reasonable quid pro quo was performing my good deed for the day.
“Here,” I said, reaching for the camera, “Let me get it.”
Once the Hellmuths and the ingénue went their separate ways, I turned my attention to razz. Gary Wise, covering the Series for ESPN.com, filled me in on the bizarre, macabre details.
