Phil Hellmuth talks about a hand played against Mike Matusow

You may have already read my earlier post about Mike playing in the recent World Poker Tour Bad Boys of Poker. In that article I talked about Mike's play and a few key hands with other players. Today I'll share some insight from another article published by Phil Hellmuth that talked about the hand that knocked Phil out of the game. Of course it was Mike that knocked him out but you'll have to stay tuned to hear about any fireworks.

In an article published today in the Lawrence Journal-World, Phil wrote about the hand that set up his early departure and ultimately the hand that knocked him out. After losing the majority of his stack while slow playing pocket Kings against Men "The Master" Nguyen, Phil tangled with Mike in the following hand (from Phil's article in the LJ World):

One hour later, with three players left — The Mouth, Tony G and me — the blinds were raised to $10,000-$20,000, with a $5,000 a man ante. During the 10-minute break before the blinds were raised, I decided I was going to make a few moves. In fact, I made up my mind that I was going to move all-in on the first hand, while I was on the button, no matter what hand I had. When I looked down at Qs-5s, I felt more comfortable with that tactic and went ahead and moved all-in for my last $180,000. Tony G folded in the small blind, but The Mouth studied for a moment in the big blind, and said, “What the heck, I call.” He then flipped up the now-familiar Qc-10c, and I knew that I was roughly a 2.5-to-1 underdog.

The flop was 7d-4s-3c, and the turn card was the Ks, at which point I needed a five for a pair, a six for a straight, or any spade for a flush. Alas, the final card was the 9d, and I finished in third place. I will not tell you who won, but I will tell you that the whole event made for great television, and that one of the players took a big-time bad beat on the last hand.

So Phil took the worst of it on this hand but eludes to the fact that Mike lost in the end to a bad beat. I'm sure Phil slept much better that night knowing that Mike didn't go on to win the match.

You can play poker online with Mike at Full Tilt Poker. Look for any table highlighted in red inside of the Full Tilt Lobby, that means a pro is seated there and it may be Mike!