What happened?
Phil Hellmuth was playing in a $50/$100 cash game at Live at the bike. The very strong lineup included Daniel „Jungleman“ Cates, Brandon Cantu, Garrett Adelstein, Bill Klein and Mike „The Mouth“ Matusow.
The later was stacked by Hellmuth for the High Stakes cash game.
After a couple of hours Phil Hellmuth suddenly stood up with the words:
“Mike, I’m going to have to quit, bro. It’s only fair I can get off, bro. The first one is your money, so just give me half, bro.”
Matusow replied: “You know what, I am as happy as I could be to take you off. You are off!
Thereupon, Matusow started straight away to count his chips and cut his stack into half. The other players at the table visibly didn’t like at all what they were seeing.
One of the players said that it was not cool that Hellmuth removed chips from the table as everybody was deepstacked before that, the others remained surprisingly calm.
Doug Polk: “I don’t think this should have happened”
It was only the calm before the storm as Doug Polk also saw the incident and was quick to speak out his opinion and make a video about it.
Doug Polk said on YouTube Poker:
“Personally, I don’t think this should have happened. You shouldn‘t be able to end someone’s share of an event in the middle of it while they’re still playing and then take their money off of their stack and off of the table. That’s not a cool move.”
Watch the whole incident here:
Opinions from the poker community
In addition to that he also posted about the incident on Twitter:
Was Hellmuth out of line when he took money off of Matusow’s stack on @LIVEattheBike? https://t.co/geppc6LPBm pic.twitter.com/uUs4Ky2RW1
— Doug Polk (@DougPolkPoker) August 30, 2019
Here are a couple of opinions from the poker community:
The other guys are experienced poker players, how do none of them speak up and say: “You have two options. Mikey stays with his whole stack, or he leaves the game.” But I guess they’d rather keep Mikey there with any amount of money.
— . (@DaleKerr) August 30, 2019
Wow @phil_hellmuth very unethical. You should have waited until @themouthmatusow cashed out to get your money..
— Rick James (@thegambleranon) August 30, 2019
Definately out of line, if i just lost my stack to a player and then a bunch got taken off, it leaves me no chance to get it back. I dont give a F what their business is, its the same thing as ratholing.Its gross
Mike needs to play his session, THEN SETTLE UP with his backer!— Mark LaPiana (@HeyItsMark275) August 30, 2019
The latest Phil Hellmuth Blow Up
As if this would not be anough drama, in the next session Phil Hellmuth produced one of his famous Blow Ups.
He got bluffed big time by Nick Vertucci with Ace High on the river holding Pocket Aces and afterwards exploded:
Watch the latest Phil Hellmuth Blow Up here:
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