This week's "Poker After Dark" is an unusually entertaining one so far. This is mainly because of the other players picking on Phil Hellmuth. He made the unfortunate mistake of comparing himself to Winston Churchill, a remark which Phil Gordon, Gabe Kaplan, and Cory Zeidman will not let him forget.
We also have Hellmuth telling Zeidman (paraphrased; it didn't seem worth the time to go back and transcribe accurately), "It's like there's a hold'em ladder with 30,000 pegs, and I'm at about peg #20,000--higher than anybody else in the world. You're at about #4. I'm so far above you, you have no right to talk to me about hold'em." Other players later noted that Phil placing himself at only 20,000 out of 30,000 may be the humblest thing he's ever said.
Phil boasts about being paid $50,000 a pop for doing corporate gigs. Then he badly misplays a hand and loses a pot he could easily have won. Zeidman zings him: "People pay $50,000 to watch you play like that?"
Spoiler: Hellmuth is first to bust out, and does so in an uncharacteristic fashion. Whatever his faults, it must be said that Phil rarely exits a tournament by calling off all his chips when he's badly behind. He's usually much more careful than that (too careful, in fact). But this time he called twice (turn and river) in a situation where he should have been far more willing to dump his hand. Naturally, he has to inject some under-the-breath remarks about how he had his opponent (Kaplan) beautifully trapped until a miracle card hit, and how he "knew" Gordon had paired that ace. (So why did you call, if you knew?)
If you love to hate Hellmuth as much as I do, it's all great fun. Watch it here.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Fun on TV
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6 comments:
I was glad to see him go. Phil is entertaining to watch if done so once every two years. He is so narcissistic that there is only one Hellmuth show. His compulsive insurance needs bring the game to a halt. He will go on and on about a minor hand that has stubbed his Godzilla ego. Meanwhile an interesting hand breaks out and a painted dog(Phil) yowls in the background. Its irritating. Poker aside, he jumps on most any corporate bandwagon like a jonesing streetwalker. They get a fifty thousand dollar puppy who wags his face. Click the link behind the net definition of idiot savant and see Phil talking about himself.
FYI, there is a somewhat interesting thread on Two Plus Two Poker Forum about this week's show.
Cory Zeidman actually posts a bunch of responses to his (and Phil's) behavior here.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/37/televised-poker/new-poker-after-dark-week-1-5-speak-your-mind-who-will-win-379648/
I enjoy any Phil bashing. Although I thought Zeidman was more or less out of line. Granted Phil has it coming to him, but that doesn't relieve Zeidman of being a nice guy.
Phil's classless no question, but Zeidman didn't show that much.
As much as I hate Phil Helmuth, I am not too happy with all that Phil bashing, coming from a guy whose main accomplishment in poker is slowrolling Jen Harman on TV. The fact that Zeidman was so active on 2p2 lately makes me think it was a nothing but calculated move designed to gain him more popularity, which makes Zeidman a bigger jerk than Phil in my book.
I also do believe that some businessmen might pay 50k for Phil's appearances. As somebody at the table pointed out, Phil is a bravado man, but he is not a liar.
As for the show itself, I think it will be much worse after his bustout, as most of the remaining players are quite boring. (How does David Grey ever make TV appearances?) I also agree with Phil that it was an exceptionally weak lineup: other than Todd Brunson, all these player are unimpressive. I haven't watched the Wed episode yet, so I don't know what happened, but I picked Todd to win this before show one, and so far he didn't disappoint.
Thank you for the link and for hating on Phil. How did you do on your Mandalay to Excal trio attempt?
Let's just say that if it had gone well, I would have written about it....
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