Week In Review #64 July 5th- July 11th 2026
Phil Hellmuth once again has said something stupid
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As I’ve become an op-ed writer, I try to resist the urge to find the stupidest take possible so that I can dunk on it. I have also resisted the urge to make the same point over and over again. Earlier this week, I began writing a blog about how Benjamin Rolle, Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow were wrong in their takes about how the system to award the WSOP Player of the Year should be changed. As I was writing about this, I realized that I wrote about this very thing almost one year ago. The reason I wrote about the same thing is because Phil Hellmuth once again made a very dumb and self-serving argument about the WSOP POY Race. Last year, Hellmuth argued that the POY formula should be thrown in the trash because Michael Mizrachi was obviously the real POY. At the time I wrote that
Phil Hellmuth sparked the debate with a tweet riddled with factual inaccuracies. Shaun Deeb is not embarrassed that he won POY, 90% of players would not have given Michael Mizrachi POY over Shaun, and Shaun did not influence the POY format. Phil later apologized for one of the things he got wrong. He did not apologize for the hypocrisy of him of all people, the guy who gets the clock paused for thousands of players so he can enter the WSOP Main Event, complaining that someone else might have gotten favourable treatment at the WSOP.
He also suggested that a panel of five people, of which he’d surely be a part of, can overrule who wins POY, a policy that could lead to all sorts of potential cronyism. Hellmuth’s argument is self-serving: The guy with the most bracelets thinks POY should value people winning bracelets. The POY points system might not be perfect, but it is objective. Complaining about who wins after the fact reminds me of people who suggest they re-award regular season MVP awards after the playoffs. It is a regular season award and that’s fine. The POY (like all player of series awards) rewards high-volume players who put up a lot of results (and pay a lot of rake) and that’s okay. Mizrachi had a historic year that will live on regardless of whether he wins POY; there is no wrong that needs to be righted, but top players putting their thumbs on the scale to get a desired outcome that feels right would be wrong.
This year, his argument is that if you lose money— that is to say your overall profit and loss for the WSOP is in the red— you should not be eligible for the POY. This is one of those “common sense” arguments that makes sense at first glance but doesn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. The POY award and leaderboard is a marketing expense to encourage more people to play more poker tournaments. Of course it should reward people for playing lots of poker, including the highest profile, biggest buyin (and most raked) tournaments. If someone wants to fire six bullets in a $100k to gain some EV in the POY race and you want to stop them from doing it, you have lost the plot. Someone max firing to try to win a trophy is good for everyone, except that person’s wallet.
Fundamentally, the goal of POY should be to promote people playing poker. Imagine if someone like Daniel Negreanu (who had a good tweet in response to Hellmuth) decided to skip a $1,000,000 One Drop because he didn’t want to disqualify himself from POY contention. Who is this benefiting? People who bet Mike Matusow to win POY? The POY criteria should be designed to increase field sizes and have top players in action as often as possible. This makes races more exciting. You don’t want to encourage people to make defensive strategic decisions, such as busting a tournament and choosing not to re-enter.
For those that argue you need to be in the black to win POY: Where do you draw the line? Why isn’t the POY just the player who made the most money? Which in almost every year would be whoever wins the WSOP Main Event (or the $1,000,000 One Drop when it ran). No one believes someone who busted eight bullets of the Gladiator without cashing had a better or more accomplished summer than someone who fired $2M in buy-ins, won three bracelets, and cashed for $1.9M. The goal of poker is to make money, and the person who wins the most is the ultimate winner. The purpose of ancillary prizes is to reward players who grind hard, play a variety of games and put up results. Suggesting that three days of grinding a $1500 HORSE tourney should be wiped out by one preflop cooler in $250k is a capricious penalty that will not lead to an ideal POY race, no matter what Phil Helmuth says.
Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries. The past week I uploaded
A PIO sim with a c-bet sizing test on the flop for POTD #303
A PIO sim with a c-bet sizing test on the flop for POTD #304
A PIO ICM sim for POTD #305
Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers
Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included in the main post. Today, I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #303, where I write about playing boards that are bad for aces in a three-bet pot.
POTD #303 onemorething I think a common mistake people make in three bet pots is they assume boards that are bad for aces are bad for the three bettor. This board is bad for aces, it’s very easy for Stevie to have flopped two pair or better and even his one pair hands after have 9+ outs vs AA.
AA still flops 74% range vs range equity. Boards that are bad for AA are troublesome for the three bettor when their range is made up of a lot of AA or big pair type hands and their other three bets rarely make strong hands. 654 is not a good flop for AA, but it’s a horrible flop for AQ or KT. The button raised and I three bet the SB, I do not have a ton of AA here, but this is a pretty good board for my non AA three bets.
I flop a pair a lot and when I don’t flop a pair I often flop a gutshot or flush draw. The reason I have a range advantage here is partially because I have AA and KK and Stevie doesn’t, but it is mostly because the bottom of my range is much stronger than the bottom of Stevie’s range. All my bluffs are mixed, I’ll have 86s or A7s sometimes, Stevie has them pretty much all of the time. I see the flop with 163 combos, Stevie sees it with 292 combos. Those extra 130 combos tend to be weak hands. I have stronger hands more often and weaker hands less often, it doesn’t matter that this is not my dream board when I have AA.
Media
No media appearances for me this week. Very little media consumption for me this week as well. I enjoyed watching the USMNT crash and burn in spectacular fashion. As a fan of sports teams who tend to be perpetually disappointing, it was very nice to see an entire country delude themselves into thinking their mediocre team was actually good, only to get trounced by a pretty mediocre Belgian team. I would have loved to see Canada beat Morocco (or to have scored a goal, or had a healthy Alphonso Davies), but this schadenfreude will tide me over for now. [I am American and did not enjoy it, but what can you really say after a game with multiple egregious, major errors? -ed.]
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