[West]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised reading his account also. Seems to me with something around 10,000 chips midway through day 1, the time to decide to fold KK because, "I can win the event if I fold my hand" is before you've called almost a quarter of your stack and received a ten high flop. Should have looked in to the guy's soul preflop.

Although I really can understand taking risks in certain situations where you think an opponent may bluff all their chips to you, in this situation, with $11,000 in the pot ($15,000 with his call), and the other guy, who he makes for bluffing, with just $8000 left, I don't see how on earth he just calls.

On ESPN a while back, they showed what I think was the most recent U.S. Poker Championship final table, which had Hellmuth, Eric Seidel, John Hennigan and the guy who won it, Toto Leonidas. It got down to Leonidas, Seidel and Hellmuth, and Leonidas basically ran over them with aggressiveness. One hand, Leonidas raised up with AQ, Hellmuth reraised with AK, and Leonidas reraised him big (can't recall amounts or if it was all in or what)...Hellmuth folded, then as Leonidas turned over his cards to show, he pointed and said, "Aces!", cringing when he saw tthe AQ. Anyway, Leonidas had been throwing chips around left and right bluffing, but on this particular hand, Phil had pocket queens. I think Toto had JT. Board was low cards I think, and Toto made some huge bet relative to the pot with nothing. Phil thought about it for a while, saying out loud, "why so much Toto?"...in the end, he decided to call, rather than reraising him. If I recall correctly, a king came off on the turn, Toto bet again, and Phil called again. I think the river hit one of Toto's cards, and he bet huge again....and Phil folded. It's possible I am remembering this incorrectly, but I think I basically have it right. Very similar play to the one above.

"After all, I could have gone out if he'd hit a seven" is a pretty ridiculous statement.

It could be that because of his reputation, he may be more likely to be bluffed at at the main event by players who want to say they bluffed Phil Hellmuth. He still managed to last quite a while even with the hands I'm sure he'd like to have over, which is to his credit. I wonder if he would have shared some of these hands with us had he not folded those big hands face up, or showed them to the camera? Either way, I do give him credit for talking about them. But it does go to show, the "pros" make big mistakes too.