Why is Hellmuth checking in the dark?

[Bartman387]

It seems to be well known that until Hellmuth proves different his playing style is not one that is successful in cash games

[roundest]

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You understand that there are different skill sets for tournaments and cash games, right? Doyle Brunson would probably arm wrestle a Crododile for a shot at Stu Ungar in a cash game, but I doubt he wanted to sit next to him at a tourney.

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You're overstating the difference quite a bit here.

[cunningham22]

if you want to beat him in a cash game, you have to get out of the kiddy pool and start making some moves!

[skydancing8]

I think he does it because he seems to believe that everyone wants to take him down. So in a sense he's alowing you to "trap" yourself by overplayign a hand against him when he is sitting on a big hand?

Either that or he lets his "ESP super reading powers" make to correct post flop decision?

[Fallen Hero]

He does it to take some of the importance out of his positional disadvantage, the only problem with it is that his opponent can take a free card in draw heavy flops (like you said), but since almost everyone would rather semi-bluff there than take a free card it's not as bad as it looks

[miami32]

I think it's a huge tell. Everytime I see him do this on TV he has a marginal hand for NL. He will either when a decent pot if he flops a set or he loses alot of his chips when he tries to make a "master read" which he tries to do often.

His checks in the dark indicate weakness and the cards he's playing when he does this are weak. It puts him in a terrible spot.

Suppose he has tens raises preflop and gets reraised. He call's and checks in the dark. Well if the reraiser has AK and takes a free card he risks losing the chips in the middle when he could have protected his hand. It's a terrible play. Terrible.

From what ive heard stuey definitely lacked the patience for limit poker. That was probably a big part of his weakness in cash games.

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Doyle Brunson would probably arm wrestle a Crododile for a shot at Stu Ungar in a cash game, but I doubt he wanted to sit next to him at a tourney.

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I disagree 100% with that statement.

I agree that Stu was better at tournaments than side games but still a very good player there.

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From what ive heard stuey definitely lacked the patience for limit poker. That was probably a big part of his weakness in cash games.

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Well, on Barry's site, he rates Stu and 8 for NL and a 7 for limit. So, he would disagree with you.

I think when Stu played his worse, was when there wasn't much money riding on it. It is like he didn't care about winnning a small game. There was an instance in "On of a Kind" where he was waiting to play in the big game and played some middle limit holdem. He played very badly and lost a lot of bets before going to his real game.

I don't think he was bad at limit, just low limit.

I thought a funny part of that book was when he was starting to get into cash games, someone suggested him play 30/60 and he said he didn't want to play that low-limit [censored]. lol

[Fallen Hero]

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I think it's a huge tell. Everytime I see him do this on TV he has a marginal hand for NL. He will either when a decent pot if he flops a set or he loses alot of his chips when he tries to make a "master read" which he tries to do often.

His checks in the dark indicate weakness and the cards he's playing when he does this are weak. It puts him in a terrible spot.


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he does it all the time with any hand, check cardplayers' live updates in the toc final table