As if a 9-hour poker game between two players for a first place prize of $8.8M wasn't exciting enough, there was controversy during the 2018 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event early Sunday morning.
Players Tony Miles and John Cynn played the longest heads-up match in the history of the WSOP Main Event. During this slugfest that went back and forth throughout with both players executing near flawless poker, announcers Lon McEachern and Norman Chad were joined by several poker pros, including "the poker brat" Phil Hellmuth, who many consider to be the best player in the world.
After over six hours of play, Hellmuth noticed that Miles was giving away a tell. A tell is "a change in a player's behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand." Every time that Miles made a bet as a bluff, meaning he was representing a good hand with a bad hand, he would flick his wrist when putting chips into the center of the table. Hellmuth discussed the tell immediately on live television.
The WSOP Main Event aired on ESPN with a 20-minute delay. Twenty minutes after Hellmuth made this observation and discussed it on television, Miles' supporters at the event were able to hear about the tell, and notify Miles so he could prevent from giving away this tell.
In a sense, Hellmuth took away an advantage that John Cynn had over his opponent in the biggest poker tournament in either of their lives. Hellmuth began getting text messages from the supporters of John Cynn that he should not have mentioned this tell, and that his actions were an unspoken violation of poker etiquette. Helmuth responded during the broadcast that he was simply doing his job as a professional poker player announcing a poker game. He noticed a flaw, and pointed it out to the audience.
What do you think? Were Hellmuth's actions justified or should he have kept quiet about the tell to not potentially impact this large sporting event?
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