Authors Note: As an additional exercise for this segment, see if you can figure out which hands were actually played by Phil and which I’ve made up. I’ll give you one hint; the hands played the absolute worst are the ones by Phil, because I simply don’t have the imaginative ability to come up with hands that awful.

Greetings fellow tournament players, it is I, the worlds greatest tournament player, Phil Hellmuth Jr. Normally I would never dispense with strategy advice for free, and the majority of my skilled analysis can be found in my enormously successful book ‘Play Poker Like the Pros’. However, it’s come to my attention that I’ve been taking a lot of flack on the forums by all these stupid internet kids who think they know something about tournaments, so I’ve come to show them all up and educate the imbecile masses. Allow me to walk you through some hands and show you how a true master of the game would play them!

Hand 1: It’s the 50/100 level in the 10k Euro Main Event in Monte Carlo. The villain in the hand is some stupid internet punk. I hold TT UTG+1. We both have around 20k.
Preflop: UTG folds, I raise to 300, it folds to the button who calls, the blinds fold.
Analysis: This seems pretty standard, though I think TT is the at the bottom of my open raising range here. My normal raising range here is JJ/QQ and AK. I would OF COURSE limp KK and AA.
Flop: Tc 9c 3h, I check, the button bets 600, I call.
Analysis: Haha! We’ve flopped the absolute nuts. That means we of course need to start slowplaying, don’t want to scare our opponent off his hand here and we certainly don’t want to build a big pot, since I might not have the nuts on future streets. I check and the button bets 600, calling is of course best here.
Turn: 4d, I check, the button bets 1000, I call.
Analysis: That’s a nice safe turn card. I check again and the button bets 1000. I of course just call again, I’ve got this kid right where I want him. I just know he’s gonna bluff his whole stack off to me on the river, so we certainly don’t want to raise now!
River: Kc, I lead out 600, the kid raises to 3600, I call. He shows me AcQc.
Analysis: Once the river comes it’s time to take this kid to value town! I lead out 600, a good looking 1/6th pot bet. Now the kid has the gall to raise me! Well, since the flush draw got there as well as the straight draw we had better call since stupid internet kids love to bluff on the river when all the draws get there. I call and he shows me the nut flush. DAMN IT! I had that stupid internet kid right where I wanted him, he was gonna bluff off his WHOLE stack to me on the river if he didn’t suck out like the stupid donkey he is! It’s obvious that I played this whole hand perfectly, I just got really really unlucky on the river.

Hand 2: It’s the 300/600 level in the 10k WPT Main Event at Foxwoods. I’ve gotten my 20,000 starting stack up to about 65,000 crushing all these stupid morons. My opponent in the hand is tournament poker legend TJ Cloutier, who has managed to drag his sorry, degenerate, 200% selling ass off the craps table to play in the tournament. TJ is sitting with about 50,000. I hold AKo UTG+2.
Preflop: It folds to me and I raise to 1800. It folds to TJ in the BB who call.
Analysis: I think preflop is pretty standard here. I’ve got AK so I raise, though it’s important to keep in mind THAT ACE KING IS A DRAWING HAND PEOPLE. When TJ calls out of the BB I know he’s got a big hand, because TJ is a tight player and he’s defending his BB against the worlds best tournament player. I am cautious going to the flop.
Flop: Ah Kc 9d, TJ checks and I bet 2000. TJ calls.
Analysis: I flop okay, though to be honest I’m Phil Hellmuth Jr. so I’m used to flopping a little better than that. I bet 2000 for value, hoping if TJ has made a loose call with A9 I can get some value here, though I imagine he’ll quickly fold AQ. TJ flat calls me, which shows me an enormous amount of strength.
Turn: Kd, TJ checks and I check behind.
Analysis: This is a pretty good turn card for me since it means TJ can’t have KK. I’m pretty sure TJ will check fold everything but AA here, so I check behind for pot control. This seems very obvious to me.
River: 2c, TJ checks, I bet 1000 and TJ calls. I show my AK and TJ mucks.
Analysis: I think this is a pretty risky value bet on the end, so I bet really small so if TJ check raised I could fold. I know the only way TJ raises me is if he has his most likely hand, AA. I’m betting to get value against his next most likely hand 99, which to be honest is a pretty loose pre flop call when you’re playing against the best no limit tournament player in the world. TJ calls and mucks when he sees my kings full, I guess he needs to learn how to play nines like the master!

Hand 3: It’s down to the final 10 players in WSOP 2007 Event 28, and I’m going for my 12th, count em, 12th bracelet! I’m so fucking important they’ve actually taken the event they were supposed to broadcast, the $2,500 6 handed event, and instead filmed the one featuring yours truly. Sucks to be you Terrence ‘not Johnny’ Chan! The table is a mixture of stupid internet punks and the regular live morons I beat up on the regular, plus a classy looking broad who likes to announce her hand while there’s still action, Beth Shak. I start the hand with about 135k at the 10k/20k level. I hold K6o on the cut off.
Preflop: It folds to me and I raise to 50,000, since I know all these stupid idiots are concerned with making the final table they’re sure to fold to me. It folds to the BB whose some stupid young guy, and he moves all in! ON ME! THE GREATEST NO LIMIT TOURNAMENT PLAYER OF ALL TIME! After thinking it over for a while, I fold.
Analysis: When it folds to me I’m in late position with a face card against a bunch of morons who want nothing more than to get as much face time on ESPN as possible, so of course I raise! However, when the BB shows the enormous strength of going all in at this point in the tournament, over me, Phil Hellmuth Jr. I know he has to be strong. Since I know my hand is behind and ‘pot odds’ are only for those stupid internet geeks, I make what is a very standard fold. What makes this fold even more obvious, is that I of course get aces the very next hand! That’s why you fold people! There’s the rest of the world, and then there’s me! Oh, and make sure when you get AA in that spot with less than 4 big blinds left to go ahead and min raise, those stupid donks will never see it coming!

Hand 4: It’s the LAPC Main Event in 2007. We’re at the final table and I’ve got the chip lead. Phil Ivey is here too, and he’s almost as good as I am, so I need to be careful with him. I hold QcTc on the button, the blinds are 30,000/60,000 with a 10,000 ante.
Preflop: It folds to me on the button and I raise to 250,000, a nice big 4X raise. The SB folds and the BB shoves for 840,000 total. I think it over and fold.
Analysis: I know I’m behind because the BB has reraised, therefore I fold. This is so obvious people!

Hand 5: It’s the WSOP ME in 2005 on Day 1. I hold KdJd at 150/300 and I’ve improved my starting stack to 25,000 on the hijack. The button has about 18,000 in chips, I’ve never seen him before.
Preflop: It folds to me on the hijack and I raise it up to 1,000. The CO folds and the button calls, the blinds both fold.
Analysis: My raise is of course a little loose pre, but since everyone behind me is a bunch of nobody morons, I think it’s profitable for me to go ahead and raise here. I get flat called by the button, who could have any number of hands. I’ll wait to see how he reacts to the flop and read his soul so I can know what he has.
Flop: 3c Td Qd, I bet 2000, and my opponent raises to 5,000. I think it over and fold.
Analysis: A lot of people think just because I’ve flopped a big draw I should be getting a lot of chips in here, but let me tell you the truth; my draw is only going to hit like, um, some of the time! Not enough to be risking my tournament life by going all in or anything crazy like that! This is day 1 of the World Series Main Event we’re talking about here! You don’t go deep in tournaments taking big gambles with just a draw! This is a very easy fold, and I bet big on the flop hoping my opponent would fold first. Unfortunately he raised instead, so you have to give up the hand here.


Alright then, that’s all the knowledge I have to impart on you stoned, mongoloid internet retards for now! Perhaps armed with knowledge like this you might actually have a chance of not losing your whole stack in the first hand you play against the WORLDS GREATEST NO LIMIT TOURNAMENT PLAYER!

At this point it’s no secret, I had my biggest winning day in online history today. I normally have to talk myself into playing a 100 rebuy tournament because I am a major bankroll nit. However, in the case of the Full Tilt 100 rebuys 6 max tournament, I always play since the field is large, soft, and the tournament plays deep the whole way through. The half dozen times or so I’ve played it so far have been mostly frustrating with one or two near cashes and no serious deep runs. Historically I have a bad history with 100 rebuy tournaments, having never won one and mostly just getting frustrated at the final table or final two tables. Today was different though…

I won the $100 rebuys 6 max on Full Tilt for $35,890. An hour and a half before that I won the $30 rebuys on UltimateBet for $5,130. Combine that with a few other random cashes today, and I’m up over $40,000 on the day. My biggest online day previous to that had been in around the $25,000 area when I won the Full Tilt Mulligan way back in May 2007 for a bit more than $27,000. In the month of February I think I’m up in the ball park area of $75,000 with a tournament win on 5 different sites and two five figure cashes and a number of other very close calls in major events like the FTOPS and weekly $1000’s. I guess this is what it feels like…TO UPSWONG!!!!!!!

At least it does if you don’t mind sitting for hours at live 2/5 NL cash games. I went down to Crown last night with my friend Joel and we sat in what started out as the most loose passive game alive (I’d say six or seven players limped to the flop was standard) and became the most spewtastic insanely aggressive game ever (7 way all in pre flop for 180 dollars and top set insta jamming the flop when he hits.) Certainly there is no way two online players can lose playing in this game for six hours. WRONG.

What ensued was one of the most frustrating nights of poker of my life. Zero draws got there as in literally not one. I flopped one set over god knows how many attempts and the table nit who bets into 3 players on 974 rainbow actually folds to my raise. I only saw two premiums in six hours, AK which ran into KK (I actually sucked out) and TT which ran into AA (the last of the night.) By the time the TT hand came up the game had gone completey psycho and I was stuck in the area of $1100. There’s two limpers to LP who makes it 30 and with TT in the BB I make it 130 with about 280 in my stack. It folds back to him, he goes into the tank then makes some speech about “why did you make it so much? You made it to much” then shoves on me. If anyone ever gives you this speech in live poker you are always about to run into the nuts, though it didn’t matter at that point since I had nearly half my stack in and was getting 3 to 1 on the crying call. Joel and I got involved in two major hands (his pot over $1200 mine over $1500) both of which we got mega rivered on. Joel managed to stage a late game come back and leave down only $200, but I got crushed for a massive $1400.

Anyway, I sent out my pitch for the ‘Around the World in 90 Days’ idea to the various marketing departments of poker sites. I decided to pitch it as writing content instead of video since video is a financial and logistical nightmare for this kind of thing. I have no idea what the probability that it gets picked up is, and I wasn’t even sure what to ask for as far as compensation goes. A friend who works as the marketing director for 888.com said depending on where I can get the article put if they paid me a flat fee for 90 days worth of poker heavy content it’d be worth $30,000, though that’s highly dependant on a number of factors.

I’m feeling a bit tired lately. I actually took Monday (which is the big Sunday in the states) off, slept until nearly 3pm, went mini golfing all day, then lied around watching the Oscars at night. I ended up winning a couple hundred gambling on them, so it’s not like the day was a total waste.

Meanwhile, Sirwatts is crushing over at the LAPC. I’ve always thought Watts was that perfect kind of TAG player who never spews, gets maximum value, picks his spots really well to make a move, and makes just about zero mistakes. Even with Ivey, Hellmuth, and Nam Le still in with a bunch of chips, I kind of want to call Watts the favorite at this point, which most would think is an absurd statement but given Watts skill and the fact that he’s a total unknown I think his potential is enormous. So best of luck to him.

Not quite as much as Anton Chigurh would prefer I bet, but losing a $12,000 flip still feels pretty terrible. I didn’t per say ‘lose’ $12,000, which of course would be much worse, but it seems similar.

I was heads up in the Bodog $250 satellite for a $12,000 World Series package (that you can option to take in cash) against a pretty bad player. The stacks sizes were my 44,500 to his 45,500 at 600/1200. I opened QQ on the button to 3200 and he shoved from the BB, elimating AA and KK from his range. Boo yah. He tables AhKh.
Flop: 3h 7s Th
I’m fucked.
Turn: As
River: Kc
*Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*

On the plus side, actually managed to win two more tournaments yesterday. When I woke I fired up the computer and found Tilt having connection problems, so I decided to fill in my regular Tilt tournaments with something on absolute. I signed up for a $50 freeze out 10k guaranteed and went for my run. By the time I got back Tilt was operational but I’d missed my normaly $75 25k guarantee so I just played the Absolute one. I ended up winning it for a bit over $2800. Later that night I played the UB nightly $150 20k guarantee and ended winning that for $5400. Not a bad way to keep the hot steak going.

Later that night I had dinner with friends and had a home game. Mid way through the game I was down around $400 in a $100 buy in 1/2 game and went outside to smoke the remaining weed from the other 2+2’ers visit. Ten minutes later I was back inside high out of my mind and laughing at everything. Despite my disabled state I managed to win back over $750 as well as pull two of the most monstrous slowrolls (which are not only allowed but encouraged in my game) of my entire life. Now I just need to figure out a fun way to blow my $368 in profits.

Meanwhile I’m going to begun talking to Pokersites about sponsoring the ‘Around the World in 90 Days’ trip and trying to talk them into filming it. I talked to my editor over at www.pokernews.com and he brought up the problem which I imagine will be an issue everywhere, it’s pretty damn expensive to do something like that and there’s not a lot of way to regain the production costs. I imagine a more probable outcome of this (if anything comes of it with a pokersite) is that they perhaps sponsor it and get exclusive rights to the writing that comes out of it. I’m really not sure and I’m not expecting anything, but it’d be cool if someone wanted to do something more elaborate with it. Here’s hoping…

With the Joe Hachem Deep Stacked series over I’m free to occupy myself with more serious online play. I wrote about the very hot day I had in Sunday Money Sunday but perhaps more incredible was the day I had during my day off from the Hachem main event. I was also lucky enough to remember to fire up Camtasia mid way through my session so I ended up recording what was one of my best days in my online poker career. When I turned on Camtasia I had nine tables running, and by the time my video was over I ended up final tabling four of them and winning one. My results for the day looked like:
PokerStars 22 rebuys: 1st for $7,115
PokerStars $150 100k: 3rd for $10,707
Pokerstars $50 50k: 50th for $126
Full Tilt $30 rebuys: 17th for $171
UltimateBet $120 Bounty: 5th for $1200 (I think, the UB updates are delayed on Bluff)
UltimateBet $150 20k: 7th for ~$1000 (again, not sure, definitely final tabled it though.)

In total for the day I made something like $18,000, edging out the previous big Sunday. Since then I haven’t had any epic days online, though today was frustratingly close. I went deep in the stars $1000 only to get QQ all in pre vs TT with 14 left and get 2 outed. Then with 12 BB’s left I made what is a questionable (and to be honest, likely bad) resteal on a HJ raise of a player I perceived as looser than he probably is. Later in the Stars $150 I was top 5 in chips with about 35 left. I opened QQ in MP1 to 10500 and the SB flat called with 80k in his stack (to my 110k.) On a flop of JT4 rainbow he open shoved 3X the pot and I obviously called. He tabled ATo and promptly hit a T on the river for what was to be either first or second in chips. I lost a flip with my remaining chips.

Things are peaceful for the time being. I’m on a good diet and in a good exercise routine. I’m running every morning first thing, and I’ve cut just about everything enjoyable out of my diet. I feel a lot better less than two weeks later having done so. I’m going to begin pitching the ‘Around the World in 90 Days’ to poker sites and websites to see if anyone is interested in filming it and having exclusive rights in order to help fund the trip. I have no idea what the chances of success are but it seems like it’s worth a shot. Until the trip I’ll be putting in my enormous online volume and aiming to get my current roll over the $150,000 mark. It's raining outside at the moment. I don't have much else to do.