My first time playing with Phil Hellmuth was in 2009 at the ESPN TV table for the Main Event. Almost all of these TV tables feature at least two (and often more than two) highly notable poker pros. This was an exception. Phil was the big star, I was the (very distant) secondary name, and the other 7 were unknowns. But somehow this was a selected table.

It was the beginning of Day 2. I was very short stacked. I was able to wrangle up almost $10,000 worth of sponsorships in the literal final minutes before the day started, getting $5,000 to wear a patch for the now-defunct MavenVT (yes, THAT Maven), and $4,250 to wear Doyle's Room. Ah, the good ol' days of poker sponsorship money.

However, Phil's presence annoyed me because we were still dealing with the fallout from the UB superuser scandal, and yet Phil was still shilling UB. He never resigned, never sold his interest, never spoke out about it. I decided that, right on TV, I was going to confront him. I knew that these ESPN episodes were highly edited, but I thought that maybe they might like some fireworks.

Play started, and up until that point, I didn't say a word to Phil. I knew that my time to confront him was short -- I had few chips, and wouldn't be long for the table unless I doubled up.

About five minutes in, my big blind came. Phil open-raised from early position. It folded to me. I had trash. I had to quickly think of something to say.

"Raising my blind, Phil? Can you see my cards, or something?", I asked, and then paused 5 seconds or so.

"Oh wait, you can't see my cards", I continued. "We're not playing on UB right now." I then my garbage hand in the muck.

The table chuckled. Phli was speechless. A few minutes later, he finally had an answer. "Just because some people at a company did some bad things, you blame everyone at that company? Even the ones who didn't do anything bad?", Phil asked me.

"I didn't say you cheated," I answered. "But you are still representing them, still promoting them. They've never come clean about what really happened, never paid back people in full, never gave hand histories. You've been silent about it the whole time. That's my problem."

Phil muttered something back about how I "didn't understand", and then walked over to the floorman. To my not-so-suprrise, the floorman approached me and warned that I had to stop "harassing" Phil, or otherwise I would get a 20-minute penalty. Such a penalty would either bust or cripple my short stack, and would be equivalent to disqualification. I went quiet, but not by choice. Fittingly, I busted against Phil, when he bizarrely raised Q2 suited under the gun, I called with 33 in the BB, and flopped a set. He made a flush on the turn, and I was gone.

Phil put out his hand to shake when I walked by, as I was exiting. I almost ignored it. Then I realized that clip of our exchange probably wouldn't make TV, and instead I'd look like a sore loser after he busted me. I gave a quick shake and moved on.

The most surprising thing wasn't that Phil told the floorman on me, or that the WSOP gave him favortism to the point of shutting me up. Nor was it that ESPN edited out or UB exchange. The surprising thing occurred about a week or two later in the Pavilion Room at the Rio.

I was walking through the room on break from a tournament, and Phil saw me. He walked up to me and asked if I hated him. What? Why did he even care what I thought. "I don't care if you hate UB, I understand that," said Phil. "I just don't want you to hate me."

Here was huge poker star Phil Hellmuth, and he actually seeked me out in the Rio to make sure a D-list poker pro like me didn't hate him.

This became a theme I noticed in the coming years, and in fact is a look into the bizarre psychology of one Philip Hellmuth.


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