The Holiday Game

Date: 2006.12.25 | Category: Hand Of The Week | By: Phil Hellmuth   

Recently, in Madison, Wis., we had our annual holiday poker game. It was pot limit Hold ’em with $5-$5 blinds, a $1,000 buy-in, with $500 rebuys. This was a hefty poker event for a game held in Madison! After years of winning during my Madison trips, in 2004 I set the record loss bar at $14,000. Word of my huge loss spread throughout the state, and my poker friends talked about it for a year. In fact, they couldn’t wait for me to come back to town in 2005.

In 2005, I won $8,000 back, and so the stage was set for 2006. When we setup the game, it seemed like every poker player in the state of Wisconsin wanted a seat at that table. I asked for a 2 p.m. start time on Wednesday (Dec. 20), with a midnight break-up time (of course, we knew the game would go well past midnight). The game was held in Jon Green’s basement poker room, overlooking Lake Ripley, and featured Mark Kroon (online poker legend “P0ker H0”), Wayne “Tilly” Tyler, Tim Belstner, Larry Beilfus (“Concrete Larry”), amongst others.