The Phil Hellmuth Effect

One thing about being a bar poker tournament director it gets you a small feel of what it would be like to be a professional poker player. If you watch enough TV poker, especially events with a lot of amateurs like the World Series of Poker, you will notice that when amateurs get on tables with big name players such as Phil Hellmuth that they will play more hands against that player. It may be for TV time or it may be that they just want to say I knocked them out. What it does is create action for the pros to win more chips, but at the same time creates more opportunities for them to be sucked out on. As a tournament director, I run into this all the time. Players that want to "out play" the director. Now I am not saying that I am a big time player just that I understand what they must go through.

One player in particular has decided that it is his mission at the bar poker games to take me out. In the last two weeks he has been on my table to start a tournament the last 3 times I have played. It is an interesting phenomenon especially when the player tells you he is staying in hands because you are in them. It requires you to make some adjustments to your game and accept the fact that it means that at some point they will suck out on you. At the same time it also means that there are going to be more chips in pots that you play and more for you to win. That's not a bad thing.

How to deal with it. You must make small adjustments to your game. It means that small raises will almost always be called by this player. This will create higher pot odds that other players left to act will play less premium hands. I have found that tight aggresive play works best for these situations, but at the same time when I do raise I make the bet much higher then I would in a normal hand. You must stick to better starting hands and try and take the pots down right after the flop. You also must be willing to throw those same hands away when it becomes clear that you don't have the best hand anymore. Here is an examples of what I have run into lately.

Blinds are 300-600 and I have about 7000 in chips. Not a big stack but not a small stack either. A player that just lost a big pot is down to 2200 and will probably push all in next hand because he is on tilt from last hand. Sure enough he moves all in. It's folded to me and I still have guy that wants to take me out behind me with a big stack. I have A-J and am certain that I am way ahead of all in. My first thought is I should push all in to try and get heads up with all in, but I know that player behind me will call, so I just call. Of course, player behind me calls, I ma in the pot. LOL! Flop is A-2-2 with two hearts. I instantly move all in to try and get the other player out. I can tell that he wants to call. I tell him unless he has a 2 he is way behind. He calls and turns up A-4 no hearts. Turn is a 3 and river is, yes you can feel it coming, a 5. He goes runner runner to take me out. He then c goes into the long and very loud talk about taking Dave out again. I just tell him to keep making the bad calls and I will take the odds on him hitting his 2-4 outer every time. He ends up getting second in the tournament, so unlike the pros who can just get up and leave I have to hear all about being taken out for the next hour and a half until the tournament is finished.

So, I do understand the out bursts that the pros make when they are sucked out on. At least I don't have to pay $10,000 to see and learn to deal with the same issues. The only problem is I am being paid to run the tournaments, so I don't get to go off on the "idiot European players". Thanks Phil for making TV poker more interesting and teaching me to deal with my limited celebrity status.