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He’s obnoxious. Loud, opinionated, verbose. In your face in some ways, immature in others; those are only a few of the reasons we hate, love or love to hate Phil Hellmuth. His legacy was founded at the 1989 World Series of Poker.
Now, eighteen years later, Phil will be entering this year’s event looking for bracelet #11. It would be hard to imagine now that Phil, staring into the eyes of the beast known as Johnny Chan all those years ago, could have foreseen his standing next to Johnny in the pantheon of poker’s greats. After all, at the time, Chan may have been the single greatest force poker had ever seen.
Chan was coming off of consecutive world titles. He’d defeated Don Holt to win his first in 1987 before, more famously, defeating young Erik Seidel in 1988. Now, he was looking at an even younger opponent in Hellmuth. Despite his legendary confidence, Chan would finally fall, and it would come on a hand where Hellmuth outplayed the defending champ.
Phil started the final hand with around 60% of the chips and a raise to $35K on the strength of pocket nines. Chan’s As-7s warranted a re-raise; he tripled the pot with his $165K bet. He was trying to cripple Phil then and there with the overbet, but Hellmuth wasn’t falling for the bait. He quickly re-raised all-in then leaned back in his chair, arms folded in waiting
Chan was left with $450K. He’d almost priced himself in with his attempt, but now looked resigned to getting it all-in despite knowing he was behind. He called with his last $450K only to see his error. The flop came Kc-Th-Kd; Chan needed an ace, two sevens or a ten.
The turn was the queen of spades, putting the nervous Hellmuth on the edge of ecstasy. When the river brought another brick, 6s, he let out a yell to go along with his ear-to-ear grin. It’s an image we’re still seeing almost 20 years later.
Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com
