My Biggest Hand
Saturday, May 23, 2009 - Phil Hellmuth
The following hand was the most important hand of my life. You see, in 1989, I won the World Series of Poker, and the following is the final hand from May 18th that year. I was playing heads up (one-on-one) no limit Hold’em against the two-time reigning world champion Johnny Chan.
The blinds were $5,000-$10,000, and the ante was $2,000 per player. I was on the button, and therefore had the small blind ($5,000 blind). I had the 9s-9c in the hole. I opened for $35,000. Johnny called the $35,000 and raised $130,000 more. In an instant, I re-raised one million dollars, all-in! After a two minute long deliberation, Chan called $450,000, all of his remaining chips. The crowd leapt to its feet as Johnny slowly moved his mountain of chips into the middle of the pot. The hands were then flipped face-up and Johnny showed the As-7s.
This was it! My dream of winning the world championship of poker all came down to one hand. I was a 2.5 to 1 favorite to achieve poker immortality! The flop was Kh-Kc-10d, and now Chan needed an A or a 10. The turn card was the Qs, now the board was Kh-Kc-10d-Qs, and now Johnny needed an A, 10, J or a Q.
The biggest dream that I had yet dared to dream, winning the world championships of poker, all came down to one card. I was still roughly the same 2 ½-to-1 favorite that I was before they flopped any cards. In a second, it was over. The last card was the 6s, and my arms shot up into the air. I had achieved my dream!
Instantly I searched the room–looking for my father. There he was, running up to me. The ESPN camera crew caught the embrace that followed, and that magical moment is forever recorded on tape, and in my mind.
But why did I re-raise one million dollars instantly? Because exactly four hands before, I had opened for the same $35,000 and Johnny had raised the same $130,000. Ironically, I had Ad-7d and folded it. At this moment, I felt like Chan was starting to play very aggressively against me. I felt like he was going to start re-raising my bets more often and with weaker hands. Since I was expecting Johnny to re-raise me here with a weak hand, I guess that my mind was already made up before he re-raised the pot. I just wasn’t going to fold my two nines. Put another way, I made a stand.
Did Johnny Chan make the right play by calling off his last $450,000 with As-7s? I believe that it was a weak call to make, unless he thought that I was bluffing. He said, “I only would have had $450,000 left, if I folded. I didn’t feel like I could beat Phil Hellmuth with that amount of chips left.” Good point, but let’s look at the math.
The numbers show us that we each had $167,000 in the pot or $334,000 total. Add in my raise of all of his chips, $450,000 and the total becomes $784,000. Johnny could have won $784,000 by calling $450,000. Thus the odds were about 1.75-to-1. Assuming that I was not bluffing, I probably had a pair over sevens or an A with a better kicker. This made me roughly a 2.5-to-1 favorite. Thus, assuming that I’m not bluffing, the math doesn’t support the call. In Johnny’s shoes, one has 1.75-to-1 odds, and is actually 2.5 to 1 underdog.
If only poker was this easy to figure out! Actually thank goodness that it isn’t this easy, because if it was, then a mathematician would win every tournament! This is the real world, so we have to account for the percentage of time that I am bluffing. I believe the percentage I would bluff in this spot is below 15 percent. We probably need the world’s greatest game theorist to help to figure the odds in such case. But that’s one of the things that I love about poker, no one knows better than Johnny Chan what the right play was. However, I don’t think that I would have made the call. I believe that I would feel that I could win the tournament with $450,000 left.
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Tags: johnny chan, Phil Hellmuth, WSOP
