Hellmuth’s Hands

Last July, 6,844 hopefuls took their seats for the WSOP $10k no-limit Hold’em championship event, and over the course of seven days were whittled down to a final table of nine. At that point the action was frozen until November 9, when the final table was played out on TV screens across the world. I believe that this delay was great for poker, because for the first time the general public were able to acquire an interest in the final table through the huge amount of media coverage it attracted.

As the World Series unfolded for two months on ESPN, for once no one knew who the winner was. Millions watched and formed opinions of who would win and why, as the TV cameras captured hand after hand that the ‘November Nine’ played. Everyone was a pundit. Ten-time WSOP champions Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson picked David ‘Chino’ Rheem to win it. Erik Seidel, Daniel Negreanu and myself thought Ivan Demidov would go all the way.

When the moment arrived, no one was stunned when the Penn and Teller Theatre at the Rio filled to capacity, and had a line of over 300 people waiting to come in and watch. People were emotionally invested, and over $30m would be won in the space of a few hours. I sat ringside with Chan, Negreanu, Greenstein and Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, while the rest of the poker world listened to the spectacle on a live web broadcast.

Blow-up

One thing that I predicted in the pre-game show on ESPN was that Scott Montgomery would lose a mountain of chips trying to carry out some sort of crazy bluff. The Canadian didn’t disappoint when the following hand came up. With the blinds at 250,000/500,000, everyone folded to Montgomery who made it 1.5m to go in the small blind with Ad-9d. The big blind – Demidov – made it just over 4m total.

From the audience Chan whispered, ‘Look at Demidov’s face – it’s turning red from his heart beating so hard; he’s really nervous and has a super-strong hand. Now look – his heart is pounding so hard that you can see his sweatshirt moving! 100% he is super-strong! If he were bluffing he wouldn’t be so nervous.’ Negreanu said, ‘There is no way that Demidov would try to bluff Montgomery – he must have a strong hand.’

As a minute passed I thought that this might be the hand where Montgomery blew it. But why would he? Montgomery had won seven of the last ten hands by aggressive play; why couldn’t he simply fold this hand and be happy with over 32m in chips (and second place) at this point?

And then it happened. Montgomery announced, ‘I’m all-in,’ and Demidov immediately announced, ‘I call.’ Demidov flipped over K-K and there was shock as Montgomery turned over AÚ-9Ú. Montgomery had made a huge blunder, but he could still win the pot and bust Demidov. The flop came 6d-4d-6c, and now Montgomery had a flush draw! With 52m in the pot, the next two cards were Ts-3c, and the Russian delegation celebrated loudly.

Let’s take a closer look at this hand. I like Montgomery’s opening raise to 1.5m, but I love Demidov’s small re-raise to 4.05m – he must have been waiting all day for an opportunity to re-raise the super-aggressive Montgomery, and Demidov was certainly hoping that Montgomery would move all-in.
I hate Montgomery’s four-bet all-in. In fact, he had an easy fold, especially considering that all of the players knew how aggressively he was playing, and that it was only the second time in ten hours that he’d been re-raised. Why stick over 25m into this pot? Yuck!

Phil Hellmuth is an 11-time World Series of Poker champion and the author of Play Poker Like the Pros. He is sponsored by UltimateBet.