Poker After Dark: The Hecklers Come to Play

Another exciting match up from Season 3 of Poker After Dark are episodes 13-18, known as “The Hecklers” is available exclusively on PokerGO. Some of the loudest mouths in poker, most tilting table talkers and explosive players include Mike Matusow, Sam Grizzle, Gavin Smith, John-Robert Bellande, Shawn Sheikhan and Phil Hellmuth.

Hellmuth began as the target of the group and only a few hands into the match Bellande and Hellmuth got into one of the most heated exchanges in Poker After Dark’s history. Hellmuth fired a small river bet to bluff Bellande on the hand with air and Bellande tossed in a call after thinking it over.

Hellmuth said, “You got it, good call,” and waited for Bellande to table his hand. Hellmuth and Sheikhan believed that proper etiquette dictates that Bellande show his cards to drag the pot, while Bellande disagreed.

Bellande was only going to show his cards if Hellmuth showed his – which Hellmuth decided it was good time to educate the public about proper poker etiquette. Matusow and the rest of the table agreed on the poor etiquette but didn’t agree that it was the rule that Bellande had to show.

Matusow found pocket nines doubled up Hellmuth when he had two kings, a couple hands latter Matusow pushed his short stack all in with pocket nines a second time. Sheikhan woke up with queens, called and Matusow was the first out.

Grizzle’s first appearance on PAD didn’t last long – he moved three-bet shoved after only looking at one card – an ace. Sheikhan called his shove with Kc Td, claiming he thought Grizzle had a shorter stack.

Sam Grizzle made a rare appearance on TV poker. (Photo: PokerPhotoArchive.com)
“I still would have called him, that’s no excuse, but he was short stacked and I had a lot of chips,” Sheikhan said. “I called with king ten off-suit and got lucky.”

As the game wore on, Sheikhan pulled away from the table with the lead and got heads-up with Hellmuth. The 1989 Main Event Champ battled back to take the lead from Sheikhan and the final hand came down to Sheikhan calling after just seeing the ace of spades.

“Deep down inside he knows I’m better than him and he can’t stand it,” Sheikhan said of Hellmuth “It’s just the way it panned out – I got unlucky and it sucks to lose.”

The PokerGO Video On Demand library continues to grow. Along with all of the World Series of Poker coverage, “Poker Nights” just launched – a scripted, short form comedy series based around a friendly home game starring Chris Parnell.