What Phil Hellmuth has to say about the online poker scandal

Phil Hellmuth and Cereus- the new software platforms for online Absolute Poker and UltimateBet.com wait in baited breath for 2008 to end quickly.

It's been more than a hard year for the company who gets itself first embroiled in an internal cheating scandal that made it to a segment of 60 minutes. The group had to pay out anyone affected by the cheating, allegedly manufactured by World Series of Poker winner Russ Hamilton.

Then over the past two weeks, the company came under fire once more, this time the controversy involved a spokesperson pro Phil Hellmuth discovered winning a lot of money via a losing hand.

It's been widely accepted that the payout was the result of a software glitch; however it appears that the poker community is shifting their angst away from Cereus and onto Phil Hellmuth following his own statement about the situation.

Phil began by justifying the event stating that in his online career ''there's probably been a hundred pots that have been shipped, maybe 50 the wrong way to them and 50 the wrong way to me.''

It was from this point in that Hellmuth began proclaiming things that were not true to the event, starting with

''What I like about Ultimate Bet is that they realized their mistake immediately''
I the real event in actual fact, the other player noticed the mistake and then contacted Ultimate Bet, demanding a refund.

Hellmuth's opponent was disconnected from the table, yet Hellmuth explains this by
''Apparently, since we were heads up, somehow my opponent left the table, right before the pot-right as the pot was being awarded.''

''And, because he left the table—and it may have been, I don't think it was his fault, it may have been the fault of the investigation, but I don’t thinks so, but he for whatever reason left the table and the pot was awarded to me.''

Hellmuth has been criticized for using a rhetorical device ''apophasis'' suggesting the truth of something by pointedly denying it. In this case, Hellmuth encourages the listener to think that it was the other players fault by saying that he doesn’t think it is.

In his statement Hellmuth goes on to proclaim that it was he who ''prompted'' the other player to check to see what had happened during the KQ hand.

Finally he gets down discussing why he played the hand the way he did.
He tells that ''The river was like a 4'' but in fact it was a 9.

Hellmuth's explanation conveys that he was paying more attention to his connectivity and not to the fact that the pot was awarded to him.

''He bet, I called. And, uh, right then and there, I could see he was having some connectivity problems. He probably connected and re-connected. He just kept popping off and popping back on. It was really weird.''

''And apparently he popped off at that exact millisecond. And the pot was rewarded to me. And then this controversy, but that's just online poker.''

Hellmuth concluded his statement by asking listeners to look on the bright side.

''The great thing was that he was actually- he did say he was very pleased that he was rewarded the pot within minutes.''

In real light of the truth the player contacted UB before 5.12 Am, then he posted that he was ''on hold'' with customer support at 5.27 Am. At 5.41 am he posted that they had given him half the pot, with a promise to give him the rest ''in a few hours.'' Helmuth's comment on this last detail…

'' I guess the CEO of UB had to go hock a few things to get the rest of the money.''

Despite the controversy of his answers Hellmuth contends about himself ''I think it's safe to say I've had a perfect reputation of honor, ethics and integrity in this business.''