Not every poker player is talking about the World Series main event in Las Vegas, which finished its fourth and final “Day 1″ elimination round Monday night. (BTW: Total entries this year were 6,358, pretty close to my guess of 6,500 made a month ago. There were 8,773 players last year. First place will pay $8.25 million, down from $12 million last year.)
Nope, some people are talking about Phil Hellmuth’s big crash. Not a crash at the poker table, but his head-on crash into a utility pole on a hotel parking lot in a $200,000 black-and-yellow Ultimate Bet racing car!
The story is he had been out in the desert driving the car really fast and decided to turn a few laps on the lot of the hotel where he’s staying.
All was fine until that donkey pole got in his way!
The car reportedly was totaled. Phil was totally shook up — “severe whiplash” according to an Ultimate Bet press release — but was walking around right after the crash.
Here’s a link to a brief video posted on a very nice site belonging to a fellow poker columnist I met while covering the WSOP last summer…
http://pokerati.com/2007/07/08/re-the-nascarization-of-pokerhellmuth-crashes/#comments