Hugo's Blogspotting: 17 May

By Hugo Martin

17 May 2007

TJ on Phil Hellmuth, Hellmuth talks Telephone Numbers, Negreanu on the Rules, Bluescouse Skint and more....

TJ on Phil

Veteran player TJ Cloutier has written a great blog about a recent encounter with his old pal Phil Hellmuth. They were both playing on NBC’s Poker After Dark, a winner takes all six man tournament with a $20k buy in. This particular table also featured Doyle Brunson, Erik Seidel, Layne Flack and Chris Ferguson. That’s 43 WSOP bracelets in total so it’s hard to find a pigeon in the game, right? Maybe not according to TJ and you can guess who he’s talking about.

“I don't want to poke too much fun at Phil because he gets enough airtime already, you know, but sometimes we ol' dogs have heard just about all we can stomach about how he's the best player in the world and all that stuff. Actually, Phil is a great player, but when he plays against the top echelon, he makes some amateurish mistakes”

TJ goes on to write about Phil mis-playing a hand against Seidel and then whining about it (no surprise there). He also talks about another hand where he traps Phil perfectly with Aces, but Phil ends up getting lucky and in fact knocks out TJ. Hmmm, maybe this is the reason for TJ’s article…TJ and Phil are old friends and TJ’s point is that no matter how good or experienced you are, you’re still going to make mistakes. The final paragraph probably sums up the Poker Brat perfectly:

“I didn't stay around to see Doyle defeat Phil heads-up, but they tell me that Phil never won a hand, that Doyle bluffed him and bluffed him and bluffed, and finally caught the deck and just ate him alive. I heard that it was all over in 10 minutes. The greatest player alive is probably still Doyle Brunson. The one who thinks he's the greatest player alive is Phil Hellmuth.”

Hellmuth does a Number

As we’re on the subject of the Wisconsin Whiner let’s check out his blog. Recent entries (May 14 and 16) have been about the recent filming of season 4 of High Stakes Poker. It seems the first day Phil did his brains and many Hellmuthisms are out in full force:

“I deserved to win (through great poker play) over $100,000, but when the smoke cleared I was down $105,500”. On losing a pot to the “live one”: “I felt like I played it like a genius, but what a beat.” On losing another pot to another unknown player: “I had to lose at least $20,000 on this hand, but $68,000? I wouldn't have lost it to a pro, that's for sure.”

On the second day things go a little better for Phil and he books a nice win (including some decent play against Sammy Farha) of $402,600, although after all the various borrowing and insurance bets the reality is that his win was actually $174,000 (still not too bad though for a couple of day’s “work” eh?).

It’s at this point that Phil’s blog gets interesting though; after dinner with WSOP champ and world class golf hustler Russ Hamilton he decides to play the $1,500 - $3,000 limit mixed game at the Bellagio. Before long Phil is once again doing his bollocks, but does he do the sensible thing and decide to call it a night? Pleeeeze, this is professional poker player we’re talking about here; Phil of course decides to play Chinese Poker for $1,000 a point against Barry Greenstein.

“I wound up losing $214,000 or so! I was sick to my stomach” he writes, “Looking back at my Chinese poker losses (a game which if a computer program tracked me, I would play at least 99 hands out of 100 right [I've been tracked before]) for the year, I have lost $536,000 (to Ivey), $110,000 (to Elezra), and $114,000 or so to Greenstein and Negreanu. $760,000 in three plays, and I haven't had a session that I won $60,000 or more all year. Why am I risking so much money at this game? Regular poker has been very very good to me all of my life.”

At this point I would normally make some kind of sardonic comment, but I think the quote speaks for itself.

Negreanu's Rules

Daniel Negreanu also writes about the recent filming of High Stakes Poker. Here’s his opinion on the Brat:

“All in all, it was, in my opinion, his best performance in a cash game that I can remember.”

So maybe Phil did play well in a cash game after all. The gist of his post isn’t about Hellmuth though; he uses the High Stakes cash game as a sounding board for his opinion on the showing a card when heads-up rule. Usually this column is trying to bring Daniel back down to earth, but for once Poker Verdict is in agreement with DN.

For some reason there’s a rule in poker tournaments these days that when you are heads-up you are not allowed to show your opponent one or both of your hole cards. In the words of Negreanu,

“Frankly, it's a tragedy what these tournament directors are doing. The players need to unite and get rid of this ridiculous rule that prevents players from showing their hole cards in heads up pots. I don't know of ANY professional player who thinks this rule has any value. Ask anyone from Phil Hellmuth to Howard Lederer and they will tell you that the right to show a card is part of the game…What's next, no speaking at the table? No prodding for information? Then finally, no bluffing at all? It's absurd! I would happily challenge Matt Savage, Jack McLelland, and any other tournament director in favor of this rule to a public debate on the merits of it.”

This maybe the first time this writer has ever heard Negreanu talk sense – good post DN.

Bluescouse Potless

I believe the last time we had a look at 88%concentration Ed Hollis aka Bluescouse was on the verge of going skint. Well guess what, he has. Not really surprising considering the ‘scouse’s bankroll management and love of playing as big as possible. He’s tried to play 5c/10c blinds, but has lost at that level too (can’t really blame him for that – pretty hard to play your “A” game when the big blind is 0.1% of the small blind in your previous game) and is now thinking of dipping into his savings to rebuild (didn’t he do that before?).

Bluescouse has many followers and it’s always interesting to check out the comments he gets. Most people go on about BR management and ask why doesn’t Ed play $2/$5 or $5/$10? “andrew” is more blunt when he writes,

“You're a brutal degenerate gambling addict and you are going to burn that 90k like it's tissue paper. We all know it, deep down, you know it too.”

To use a phrase my mate Neil “Bad Beat” Channing likes to roll out now and again, that’s a bit harsh isn’t it?

How to Get Your Dough Back from Neteller

Matt Maroon has written a very handy post for any of our American readers who have a load of moolah stuck in neteller. In six steps he tells you how you can get your money back. It involves going to Canada and setting up a bank account over there and a few other semi-complicated processes (something about a Canadian virtual phone number etc), but basically it appears that Maroon has successfully retrieved all his do-re-mi from neteller so this could be one blog entry you have to read.

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

17 May 2007

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