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Every now and then I write something where I criticize the play of Phil Hellmuth. I maintain to this day that while Phil certainly isn’t ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s unprofitable in live tournaments, he is ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s fucking clueless with pot odds, stack sizes, position, math, playing thinking players, and especially ranges.

Every time I state stuff like this (also known as stating the obvious) a couple dozen Phil Hellmuth supporting mouth breathers come out of the woodwork and snap at me with comments like “OH MY GOD, WHAT DO YOU KNOW BOND!? DO YOU HAVE 11 WSOP BRACELETS? NO? THEN WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION PHIL!?!?!?” then they return to drooling on themselves while losing money at .05/.10 and masturbating to bestiality porn. And thank God for those mouth breathers to, otherwise I might forget the true measure of a poker player’s skill is how many bracelets they’ve won by beating up on the softest live poker fields in world (WSOP NLH events) and not their ability to make optimal decision after optimal decision. Again, I thank you mouth breathers for clarifying this for me.

Luckily Phil does a lot of work to make my argument about his play for me. I thought he’d never top his K6o raise/fold, but it turns out I was very wrong. I refer you to this link:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=33usfhh&s=4

Note how Matusow nearly has a seizure when he sees Phil’s cards.

Anyway, this will be my last serious day online for about a week. Tomorrow morning I head off to New Zealand for APPT Auckland. Before the tournament I’m doing a day long seminar there with Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson among other excellent players and poker thinkers. If anyone is attending Auckland let me know so I can say hello.

The main event is a $2500 USD buy in and the high rollers event is about $6500 USD. Unfortunately the high rollers is on the second day of the main event, so if you last through the first day no high rollers for you. I’m not sure why they put it their, but Danny McDonough (the APPT tournament director) is a smart guy so I’m guessing it was the only time realistically available. I may or may not blog the trip, after having done the ‘Around the world in 90 days blog’ I’m a little worn out on trip report style blogging, but I’ll be taking notes at the table in case things get interesting.