Phil Hellmuth Beats Tom Dwan in Round 3 of High Stakes Duel 3
3 minutes
Posted by: Ivan
Phil Hellmuth defeated Tom Dwan in PokerGo’s High Stakes Duel game show Wednesday night, which adds to his already impressive winning streak of 8 out of 9 matches.
Hellmuth didn’t try to hide his excitement about winning as he thinks Tom is one of the best players in the world.
According to Hellmuth, Tom is a ‘natural-born Hold’em player’, of which there are only 10 in the world, Hellmuth himself being one of them.
The match between the two legendary poker players started at 5 p.m. PT in PokerGo’s studio in the Aria Casino, Las Vegas.
Both players bought in for $200K a piece, bringing the total prize pool to $400k. Of course, Dwan only had to stake $100,000 of “fresh” money as he had $100K in the bank from his win the Round 2.
The match began rather slowly, with not much going on. Both players won a few small pots, with Dwan hitting a straight flush on the river once and Hellmuth rivering a nut flush during a different poker hand.
Other than that, there wasn’t much action on the table during the beginning phase of the match as opponents were testing waters.
I thought I had him! Woulda been more fun to see if I could have called if a red deuce hit the river #POSITIVITY https://t.co/PIqEYmXJ4j
— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) January 27, 2022
First Big Action After One Hour of Play
After about an hour, Hellmuth won a decent hand (200,000 chips) with trips versus Dwan’s top pair. This was only the start of Hellmuth’s lead, as quite an interesting hand followed shortly after for the ”poker brat.”
The pot size was around 12,000 on the turn with on the board, when Hellmuth checked his and Dwan fired a semi-bluff for 9,600 with .
Hellmuth check-raised to 19,200 in response and was called by Dwan. was dealt on the river and both players ended up checking, resulting in Hellmuth winning a nice pot with just a King-high.
Hellmuth Shifts Gears to Win the Match
Although Hellmuth doesn’t play too aggressively overall, he does pull off a good bluff every once in a while, and his tight image often works to his advantage in these situations.
In general, Hellmuth started the match versus Dwan off quite passively, but rapidly increased his pace during the middle and late stages of the match.
At one point Phil limped in for 800 with on the button, only to be raised by Dwan to 5,600 with .
Hellmuth decided to make the call and the two proceeded to the flop of and both players just checked. was dealt on the turn, giving Phil three of a kind.
This encouraged him to bet 17,000, which was called by Dwan. rolled on the river and Hellmuth placed another bet, 37,000 this time.
With just one over-card to his pocket tens, Tom couldn’t find the fold, and after he put his chips in the middle, another sizeable pot was shipped Phil’s way.
After this hand Hellmuth was a clear chip leader with almost three times as many chips as Dwan.
In the final hand Hellmuth raised Dwan all-in preflop for about 70,000 with . Dwan called with his pocket eights, and the board ran out , wrapping up the match and awarding the win for the Poker Brat.
Hellmuth couldn’t cash out the $400,000 prize money from his match against Dwan just yet, as he needs to win one more match according to the rules.
If Dwan wants a rematch, he must buy in for $400k, which will result in a massive $800k heads-up prize pool for the next showdown.
Tom has already announced his intention to challenge Hellmuth to a new duel, and if everything goes to plan, poker fans will get another great show in a couple of months’ time.
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