Can Hellmuth dodge bullets?

My next hand following on from the Isaac Haxton vs Ryan Daut hand that I posted last week involves the one and only Phil Hellmuth. In fact someone posted the exact same hand on the forum last week which kind of gave me the idea. I will repeat the footage here but Hellmuth as you can see open raises with A-K and gets three bet by a guy with aces who raises the minimum.

It is hard to tell if this guy is a novice, limit player or just doesn’t understand bet sizing but Hellmuth is obviously not going to fold to a min raise. But when the flop comes down A-4-4 then it looks as though sparks might fly

Firstly I am not a big fan of checking in the dark but I would be interested to hear some views on that on the forum. But this is where I think checking A-A back was a mistake. There is no way that Hellmuth is going anywhere on that board after raising pre-flop and calling a three bet albeit for the minimum. I think A-A simply betting the hand makes more money than checking but anyway, that isn’t the main point of the hand because I think Hellmuth smells that this guy wouldn’t get out of line very often pre-flop without the goods.

It is hard to come to a conclusion in less than four minutes of footage but the guys age, his dress and demeanour do not scream LAG to me. So although Hellmuth is being priced into the call pre-flop then once the queen arrives on the turn that could have hit his three betting range also then the fold with A-K on the turn is pretty standard if the stacks are deep enough. It’s pretty unlikely that he guy has A-Qs but he is also now losing to that hand along with Q-Q.

In fact the commentator even says that he had shown the goods to Hellmuth several times in the past which once again is another huge clue that the guy isn’t getting out of line. If you call the turn then you have to face the prospect of another bet on the river. But come on Phil…….”how many people in the world are going to dodge that?”……well actually what doesn’t help the analysis is that I can’t see the stack sizes because of the picture quality but it just looks like a fold even to me and I haven’t won eleven bracelets.