Usually when you cover a Tournament, your headline makes it clear who won the event, and it does little else.  After all, the winner of the event IS the story, right?  Well, usually that’s the case, and we would be remiss not to congratulate Eric Rodawig on his terrific bracelet win in Event #33 ($10K Stud H/L Championship) of this year’s World Series of Poker.  The Washington D.C. based pro outlasted a brutal final table, and an equally tough final 2 tables, in order to take home the hardware and the paycheck for this year’s 7 Stud H/L World Championship.  In a field where stud specialist Cyndy Violette (15th), Bill Chen (14th), Eric Seidel (13th), Phil Laak (12th), Ali Eslami (8th), David Benyamine (5th), Ted Forrest (4th), John Racener (3rd), and Phil Helmuth (2nd) all had to be vanquished inside the money bubble, Rodawig dispatched or outlasted them all, and is a very worthy champion.

BUT, this would still be a fairly common-place event had it not been for the 2nd place run of Phil Hellmuth.  This is Hellmuth’s second consecutive runner-up finish in a non-Hold Em $10K World Championship event (he also finished 2nd to John Juanda in $10K 2-7 Lowball).  It is, as a matter of historical accuracy, his 81st cash in a WSOP, and with 11 bracelets to his credit, you have to assume that even 1 more WSOP Title would move him into a territory that no one may ever match.  In Event #33, Hellmuth came ever so close to hitting that mark and taking home bracelet #12.  He also catapulted himself into the lead in this year’s Player of the Year race.  What a difference a day makes – yesterday we updated the POY race with no mention of Hellmuth, after touting his future chances in an article just one week ago.

To quote our original article (posted on June 15th), “this could go one of two ways for Hellmuth.  He either comes out of that tournament (the Lowball event) full of confidence and looking for blood …….makes a deep run or two and stays in this race, OR he throws a series of television-camera-induced tirades and whines his way out of contention in event after event, and we don’t hear much more about him this WSOP.” We stated then that we thought he’d be going after option #1, and sure enough, 5 days later he comes right back to finish in 2nd again.  Make no mistake, this is an older and wiser Phil Hellmuth.  This is a Phil who still plays for the cameras and seemingly invents his own celebrity persona at times, but I think that for better or for worse, we have moved on from the man who told us that he could dodge bullets, who called out a player (or dozens) for their erratic play, who showed up to the Main Event in a racing costume, who bemoaned playing against all “idiots from Northern Europe”, and who once accused a man of not being able to even spell poker.  He’s grown up, gotten past things like that, and you and I should, too.

Don’t assume that Phil Hellmuth will never blow up at a poker table again (he will), but at the same time, don’t think for a second that there isn’t an older, wiser, more calculated man sitting in his seat nowadays.  These two Final Tables in fixed-limit, non-Hold Em events tell you a lot about his concentration and patience this year.  They tell you that he is locked in on cards, and not so much worried about celebrity parties and name-dropping.  Honestly, I think that a lot of “old guard” pros would do well to emulate Phil right now, and not just in terms of results – his poker playing itself is on a very high level, and we don’t see that changing any time soon.  If he wins the Player of the Year title, it will be a deserving victory.  They always are, but this would be particularly sweet for a man who once reminded us that if it weren’t for luck, he’d win every one of these things.

Final Table Results for Event #33 (7 Stud H/L World Championship):

1    Eric Rodawig        $442,183
2    Phil Hellmuth        $273,233
3    John Racener        $171,122
4    Ted Forrest        $123,904
5    David Benyamine    $96,836
6    Mikhail Savinov    $77,222
7    Joe Tehan        $62,710
8    Ali Eslami        $51,750