FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#547 – London 2008 #54 – Million Dollar Cash Game – Phil Hellmuth has Stormed Off the Set

Posted by Editor | Filed under London 2008, Million Dollar Cash Game '08, Phil Hellmuth

Just as they were coming out of the break, Phil Hellmuth had a run-in with tournament director Barry Mundee and stormed out. I mean it: stormed.

Barry has an incredibly difficult job as tournament director of this game and has handled it delicately and with professionalism. It’s a poker game AND it’s a TV show. And because these guys are playing with a large amounts of their own money, it’s not even like a tournament where everyone on TV is a winner. The players act like you’d expect people to act when they have hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.

So when the players want to do things to speed up play – like cutting out breaks to change tape and, I assume, give the crew contractually-required breaks – he can’t behave like a tournament director. He has to be the heavy for the production. Or when they want to play Chinese Poker during a break to change the tape, he has to be the bad guy and tell the dealer not to deal the cards, then stand there while they stare at him when the delay takes a few minutes. And these guys all have very intimidating stares.

A minute later, Matusow yelled, “Five thousand dollars for anyone who gets Phil back in the game!”

There wasn’t a stampede for the door but several members of the audience rushed out. I was already on my way out because I wanted to talk to Phil – I swear, the $5,000 had nothing to do with it. We talked for a few minutes.

He was steamed about some request from the production, but what REALLY had him steamed was the way the game has gone. Phil assumes the whole world is against him and he does that regardless of the circumstances, but he’s had a tough day. He got played with a lot and when he played back, he got no breaks, either losing coin-flips or running into big hands or running into little hands that became big hands, etc.

He probably knows that his blaming everyone in the world is excessive, and some of that is for show or it’s his way to blow off steam. But he truly takes enormous pride in his abilities and somewhere deep inside, probably feels his skills were “wronged” by the breaks of the game today.

And let’s face it, Phil Ivey is in everybody’s head. He’s so good, and is so good at taking advantage of timely luck, that catching him is like catching lightning. Sure, he didn’t win anything yesterday but most of his losses were relatively small. And it seems every time he wins a pot, it’s a GIANT one.

When he springs the trap yet again, he gets deeper into his opponents’ heads. Phil Hellmuth knows that and is trying to fight it. But you’ve seen what happens when Ivey occupies that space: Mike Matusow.

Mike told me that he knew there was no hand Phil Ivey could have to beat his king-high flush. But there he was, taking five minutes to talk himself out of calling a not-too-huge bet with an incredibly strong hand.

Phil said he was done for the night in any event and admitted it was more the game than the production or the personnel that set him off. He offered to do an exit interview – he said to Uncle Tilty, “You were nice enough to invite me and I don’t want to do anything to hurt your production. If it helps you and all my friends at Full Tilt, I’ll give an interview or whatever you want” – and they took him up on it.

He can be a baby but he’s also a professional and he has a lot of pride. It’s been a bad day for him and he was at least nice enough to offer to help the production after he left. I’d like to think he apologized to Barry Mundee, though I won’t ask either Phil or Barry about it.

This all happened around 9 PM. It’s now 9:25 and Mike Matusow keeps asking if Hellmuth’s coming back. Finally, he leaned back toward the audience and said, “I’m drawing dead here, aren’t I?”

It looks like it Mike.

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