Phil Hellmuth's play here isn't bad but it's likely viewed as random in the sense he probably hasn't and probably is almost never making this sort of sizing with large portions of his range because of a couple of reasons:

1) He is in the BB and raising against a 2bb open and putting in 6bbs of your 15bbs and then folding isn't something you'd expect him or even I'm sure he himself expects Foxen to think will happen so he is essentially pot committing all in, in Foxen's eyes.

2) Again he is in the BB and closing the action. The vast majority of his non folding range even in a Phil Hellmuth' strategy will often either a: want to call 1bb from the BB or b: want to go all in for 15bb from the BB

He lengthened the game tree in this hand, arguably unnecessarily and I think he actually does come up with the correct decision in calling after putting in that percentage of his stack even with future game and ICM. It's at least close with the way the stacks were at that point. If he had just shoved preflop no one would be saying it was a terrible play or atleast they shouldn't in a vacuum. Obviously he should not be shoving it every time but Q4o could be part of some sort of reasonable 3bet shove range in this spot against Foxen. Especially when you consider Foxen is probably over opening the spot the begin with given the people and stacksizes in the blinds.

The questions I'd ask Hellmuth:

Was he trying to look stronger here by making it this size rather than going all in?

Did he think he had a chance to "go and go" on Foxen sometimes in a postflop spot in this hand?

Was he trying to lengthen the game tree to possibly get a live read on the strength of a Foxen' all in? maybe fold in the cases he reads insanely strong which I doubt he'll be able to get very often considering the live play experience of Foxen and also while Foxen is going to probably overfold in this spot he's still getting it in every time with all sorts of hands that Phil Hellmuth's Q4o is doing "ok" against given the price for both of them in this hand.

Galfond explained it quite well. Amazing how many people just want to **** on Helmuth no matter what.

lmao if you think galfond was being serious

Basic commonsense subjective tell reading indicates Galfond was serious. Galfond isn't one to classlessly mock another person. He does say he wouldn't make the play himself. Just that Hellmuth was not as far out of line as many people impulsively thought.

That Galfond post was definitely not serious.

Posting the most tilting Phil Hellmuth bluff to get through of all time in my opinion. I remember watching this match live and just re-listening to the commentary. God damn it is tilting.

Hellmuth tries to tell these stories that he's strong all the time in weird ways but he's so trappy in other spots, never really bets thin for value or 3bet/4bets wide for value so his range in these spots is often just a bunch of bullshit when weird raise sizes, or multiple bets or raises get in from his end.

ahh, actually I think I'm wrong. I re-read Galfond post and seems legit. I'm not sure why he thinks that though and that it wasn't just Phil Hellmuth trying to do something "strong looking" with a shitty hand in the portion of his range to get Foxen to over fold alot of hands in what was probably something like a 60%+ opening range.

The Galfond post is definitely satire..... he ends it by saying Phil finished 2nd not 1st which is another thing that you're all not capable of understanding!!

ok then, Personally I have or had no idea what happened after that hand or who won the tournament so even if I saw that it would not have registered anything for me.

Galfond would never ever think that phil could narrow someone’s range to having a 9 in it. If it’s serious it’s either an insane take or a level.

guess which one

When you 3 bet with Q4 with less than 10 bigs behind you you're committed.

LOL WUT

Galfonds post is incredible and great gauge of people's intelligence who don't get it lol.


To state the obvious it's irrelevant whether the play is good or bad (obviously bad). The point is how Phil would treat someone if the roles were reversed and how he feels it is acceptable to speak to people .
Apologising afterwards doesn't excuse repeated bad behaviour, the guy is a piece of **** and deserves all the ridicule he is getting and more

Yeah I'm surprised how popular he is. I think he's a complete bellend and if I see he is in a televised game then I will almost certainly stop watching it as soon as any of his antics and theatre starts. It's a total pantomime but he jumped the shark with it years ago

Hellmuth got 2.5 to 1 pot odds on that last call. He would have needed to be 70 to 30 underdog to breakeven, which would be where he would be against 5-5 to J-J or any Ace. He would only be totally srewed against AA and KK, which he probably eliminated based on reads.

Not as bad a call as it looks.

Plus Phil is not thinking about ICM. He's going for first everytime.

The Galfond post is written purely in a style, & for a similar effect, that my posts here are

It's a work of art��so, you know, for the record, I've been doing that for years

ugh actually speechless

so many levels itt

Yeah that's a good point, some of his rants go a little too far but always entertaining and if you are the one being scolded at least you are scooping his chips as compensation

As far as the hand goes, I don't see the big deal. Re-raise before the flop is losing but probably only a little bit and I'm sure his rationale in not going all in was to make himself look slightly stronger. And against the general population I do think you may get folds from a few combos that might have called versus a plain all in as opposed to them having to just go all in versus the re-raise. Maybe not with Foxen though, I have no idea.

Then once he got put all in he made the call due to getting priced in (or close to priced in) and reverse ICM. He's going for the win.

I'm not convinced the raise pre-flop is losing. And, if he had a read of weakness, then it's 100% understandable. But maybe he should have made it a little bit smaller then more easily folded to the shove.

You’re saying he raised to an amount that made him feel priced in to call…which is bad poker. If he is raise calling Q4o, what hands is he raise folding? If he plans to raise call his entire range he should just jam. In which case he should be jamming a linear range that contains no pure bluffs like Q4o and only has value.

Q4o versus 88+,AQ+,98s+,ATs+,KJs,KQs has like 27% equity. So the call is losing even before factoring in ICM

I assumed it was losing just based on what a computer sim would say. But given the factors involved, and how tight Hellmuth can be it might only be losing a little or even be winning. I have no idea.

Another poster made a good point that Hellmuth is very trappy. If he had AA, how would he play? So his re-raises may be a high concentration of goofy stuff. Not sure how Foxen views it.

Anyhow to summarize:

1. Poker player makes an aggressive action, which may be losing but maybe not much
2. Poker player gets caught with his hand in cookie jar and calls getting more or less priced in

So not much of a big deal other than we know had the hand gone the other way the verbal tirade would be immense