Little and Large

I did promise to relate the story of DY managing to confront Phil Hellmuth. Having talked to the man himself though (guess which one) the truth, as ever, is not quite as entertaining as the myth. The story going round the bar in Vegas was that DY managed to buttonhole Hellmuth with “Excuse me, do you represent Ultimate Bet ?”. Walking around in the current style of Vegas professionals, that is as a walking sandwich board of Ultimate Bet hats, shirts, trousers and probably jockstraps, PH was unable to deny this. “Well I’m having problems cashing out” followed up the indefatigable Youngster. At this point Hellmuth, where lesser men would have looked for the exit, pretended to phone Annie Duke because “She deals with that side of things” and then made his excuses because she was busy. Consensus in the bar was “yeah right and Devilfish does the registrations”.

The truth of the matter though is that neither party used those exact words, and in fact David tells me that Hellmuth was courteous and fully aware of his responsibility to represent the site. It’s still a great picture though, if you didn’t know, Phil is about 6’5” and David, er, isn’t. He admitted to me that “eye contact was difficult”.

The fact remains, and this is the point I wanted to make, that if you do take the shilling then you ought to make an effort to represent your sponsors. It’s the least I would expect if I was paying these guys just to wear a few shirts. I can think of a few English players who have taken a shilling or two who barely know how to turn a PC on !

Finally you can find DY’s own Vegas diary on www.gutshot.co.uk, and also a very amusing piece by David Lloyd about logos not being allowed, check it out.