Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Credit to the Hanson kid for finally getting through Phil's thick head.
What Phil needs to realize is that he's one of the main faces of poker. This makes him a lot different than Johnny Angleseed at Bellagio. You can't ever give the impression to the public that you're screwing lesser players out of money, or it makes the game look horrible. In Phil's spot, you need to be overly generous regarding what you decide to allow in controversial situations. This is especially true if it's on a high profile stream which everyone is watching.
I don't know what Phil was thinking. I think he lacks such self awareness that he didn't realize how terrible this would come off, and all he could see is that he would have likely won the hand if he had called. I believe that Phil really didn't believe he was folding. I even believe that Phil wasn't angling... he probably really was trying to slide the hand over to Dwan to see. Still, it really had the look of a fold, and he had to realize this and just give up.
I think getting away with decades of berating people with zero consequence (plus worming out of much criticism in the UB situation) has caused Phil to erroneously believe that he never has to worry about public backlash from anything.