Is Phil Helmuth even THAT good?

[Beavis68]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know people LOVE to bash old Phil but I have to correct you here as it is not even close to what happened. On the hand in question Hellmuth had QJ and Toto had A7. The flop was I believe (and this is from memory) Q-7-x. Toto totally jumps the gun and goes all in with middle pair for a ton of chips. Then Hellmuth, who was outchipped looks at him for a long time and says, "why so much Toto...I call" and commits his entire stack with the far superior hand. Toto rivers a 7 and the rest is history.

Everyone loves to get on Hellmuth but I have to say that pretty much every big hand I've seen him lose, and there have been a lot, are ALL pretty bad beats where he played it right.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, the hand described above was at the Sands, and I believe it was Paul Wolfe, not Toto (I know it wasn't Toto).