Another Hellmuth-hating post

I'm innocently reading my Card Player magazine and come to Phil Hellmuth's column. As regular readers will know by now, I dislike a whole lot of things about Phil, but at least his columns usually have a worthwhile hand analysis or two. My distaste for nearly all things Hellmuth won't prevent me from learning a tidbit of poker insight here and there if he can provide it.

But this time the column just made me mad. Without so much as a "Warning: Spoiler alert!" he blurts out the outcomes of three of next year's "Poker After Dark" tournaments that he just finished taping. This is NBC's late-night poker show, which stuffs an invitational, six-player tourney into a Monday-to-Friday nightly series. A large part of the fun of watching is the tension from not knowing what's going to happen.

And here Phil goes and spills the beans on three weeks' worth of shows!

I understand that when there's a major open tournament that will eventually be televised, such as the World Series of Poker or the World Poker Tour, it's impossible to keep the lid on the results until the show airs months later. I get that. I don't ask for a news blackout for events like that.

But when there is a show like "Poker After Dark" or "High Stakes Poker," where just a handful of players is invited to participate on a closed set, it's not asking too much, in my opinion, for those involved to keep quiet about how it all turns out, so that we viewers get the little vicarious feeling of suspense from not knowing the ending.

And now Mr. Hellmuth blows that. (Note that I won't further spread his sin by repeating the news here.) I can't think of a single good reason why he couldn't have written the column while the hands in question were fresh on his mind, but then held off having them published until after the tournament was televised. In fact, they would serve a better educational purpose after the broadcast, because interested viewers would have seen the whole context of the game as background for understanding whatever points he wanted to make about why he played the hands as he did. (Poker hands cannot be examined fully without the context of table image, who has been running hot, who's on tilt, who has been playing the role of maniac and rock, etc.)

This is just one small pebble that has been added onto a mountain of classless, thoughtless acts perpetuated over the poker career of the proud and self-proclaimed Brat.

While I'm at it, shame on Card Player, too, for not stepping in and holding these submissions until later. What's next, CP? If you review a poker-themed murder mystery, will you tell us whodunnit so that we don't have to suffer not knowing while we plow through the book? If you get invited to an advanced screening of the next Hollywood poker movie, will you outline the whole plot, beginning to end, so that we can sit in the theater comfortable in the knowledge of how it all turns out? If you wouldn't do such things, then why allow Hellmuth to accomplish the same thing with his column?