Still Doing Monte Carlo in Style

Date: 2005.12.12 | Category: Hand Of The Week | By: Phil Hellmuth   

Last week, I talked about missing my turkey dinner and losing a pot with pocket 10s as my holdings — after playing them in a controversial way. This happened while I was engaged in a seven-player affair with a $120,000 buy-in that went out live to more than 110 million households worldwide on FSN and Sky Sports. The tournament was held behind closed doors in the Monte Carlo Casino with world-class players Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, David “Devilfish” Ulliot, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, John Juanda, Mike “the Mouth” Matusow, and me.

Now let’s continue with another interesting hand that came up, this one between the 2000 World Champion Ferguson and me, when the blinds were $5,000-$10,000 and the ante was $2,000 a player. Everyone else folded to me, and I looked down at Kh-Jh on the button. With $97,000 left, and showing a pretty conservative playing style, I had a decision to make. Of course, I would raise it up, but how high should I make it go?

I could set it anywhere from $30,000 to $97,000 to go, and I had a decent hand, one that I would have been quite happy simply to win the blinds and antes with. I wasn’t Matusow — who had gone broke pushing all-in with 7-6 off suit 30 minutes earlier — and the guys knew that from years of watching my relatively conservative play. If I were to put in my whole stack, I would be sending a message that I had a pretty good hand. I’d also be making it very tough for anyone to call with a small pocket pair, or an ace-x type hand like As-5s (x being a weak kicker). Whereas if I made it just $30,000 to go, someone could well move all-in, raising it my last $67,000, with his small-pair or ace-weak-kicker type hand.