At the time when the second day of the Poker Masters Event #5 $100,000 NLHE ended, all eyes were set on young Fedor Holz who emerged as the chip leader of the final table. The attention towards him, however, was quickly distracted by what ended up as a verbal war between Daniel “KidPoker” Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth on Twitter.
The fifth event of the inaugural Poker Masters series gathered a total players field of 36 entrants. Only 15 of these players returned to action on the second day of the event, which quickly saw the elimination of the extremely short-stacked Phil Hellmuth. Shortly after that, Hellmuth was followed by Daniel Negreanu who ranked 11th.
Negreanu had hoped to emerge as the player who is to get the Poker Masters Purple Jacket and has even participated in a must-win bet which would have brought him more than $1 million in side action if he had won the Jacket. Now, in case that a player Negreanu have bet against wins it, the Canadian will have to pay them $50,000.
However, it was neither the Fedor Holz’s chip lead at the end of the second day, nor the side bet of Negreanu that drew as much attention as the sharp words which the Canadian and Phil Hellmuth exchanged in their accounts on Twitter.
Real-Time Twitter Drama
So, how did the saga begin? With Phil Hellmuth sitting among the players at the Poker Masters series Event #5, it was only a matter of time his arrogance show up. And as poker players and fans know, Hellmuth’s arrogance really knows no boundaries, regardless if he angrily scolds his opponents or makes absurd and eccentric poker tournaments’ appearances.
So, there was hardly anyone who got surprised when trouble came with Hellmuth appearing at the Poker Masters Event #5 Day 2. After both he and Daniel Negreanu got eliminated, the Canadian criticised Hellmuth in his official Twitter account, saying the latter had absolutely no respect to players who played circles around him. Negreanu said Hellmuth disrespected the generation of young poker players and instead of learning from them, he chose to berate them. He further said he did not know whether the insults were personal, but criticised Hellmuth for treating other poker players disrespectfully on a consistent basis.
I don't think you are being realistic Phil but I'm not surprised. Your disrespect for this generation only hurts your own growth.
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) 20 September 2017
Hellmuth, on the other hand, once again demonstrated his notorious arrogance and large ego, saying Fedor Holz may be the greatest poker player one day, but he needed to win tournaments in large poker series such as the WSOP, WPT and EPT, rather than winning high-roller events against a small number of competitors.
The verbal war between them two quickly escalated when Hellmuth challenged Negreanu to make a list of players who he believed to be better than him in No-Limit Hold’em tournaments, once again claiming he is the best poker player in NLHE. Of course, Negreanu did not leave things that way and presented him with a list of 40 players he believes are better than Hellmuth.
The Twitter posts were fun to read and comment, but some Twitter users shared doubts that the whole social network drama was arranged in advance in order to attract Twitter users’ and poker fans’ attention for a PokerGo show that could kick off in the future. These doubts were denied by Negreanu, who said that the challenge he posed to Helmuth was absolutely real.
- Author
Harry Evans
