Phil Hellmuth stays unbeaten in ‘Duel,’ fights off Nick Wright

Nick Wright couldn’t topple Phil Hellmuth from his “High Stakes Duel” throne, but helium made him sweat.

Hellmuth remained undefeated successful the “Duel” format connected the subscription video work PokerGO, winning a $50,000 buy-in No-limit Hold’em heads-up lucifer with Wright, an FS1 speech amusement property and avid amateur poker player.

“He had maine dazed and confused and frustrated,” Hellmuth said aft the 5½-hour match.

Wright led for the archetypal 2 hours and had Hellmuth ranting successful his signature “Poker Brat” benignant aft Wright rivered 2 brace to bushed Hellmuth’s apical pair. After Hellmuth tried a poorly timed bluff against quad queens, Wright held a spot pb of astir 2-1.

However, Hellmuth, 57, the all-time person with 15 World Series of Poker tourney victories, gradually took power against Wright, 36, the co-host of “First Things First” connected FS1.

On the last hand, some players made a flush connected the turn, but Hellmuth’s eight-five of clubs trumped Wright’s seven-six of clubs. Wright raised all-in connected the river, past yelled “No!” successful disbelief aft Hellmuth called and revealed his hand.

“I can’t judge I mislaid that past hand,” Wright said. “Phil played great. I played good for the archetypal 2 hours, past I played really, truly severely for an hr and was clawing my mode backmost from it.”

Hellmuth is present 7-0 connected “High Stakes Duel,” having antecedently swept 3 consecutive matches each against Antonio Esfandiari and Daniel Negreanu.

Wright has the close to a rematch astatine treble the stakes, but Hellmuth said helium would similar to determination connected and play idiosyncratic else.

“There’s excessively overmuch pressure,” Hellmuth said of playing an amateur player. “If I suffer to him, past it feels similar I suffer immoderate bequest points.”

Wright said helium would instrumentality his clip to determine whether to pony up $100,000 for different challenge.

“I got 72 hours, right? I’m going to request 71 of them,” helium said.

Top high-stakes pros Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey person been named arsenic imaginable challengers to Hellmuth if Wright decides to determination on.

“Dwan oregon Ivey, whoever,” Hellmuth said. “Either 1 is fine.”

Contact Jim Barnes astatine jbarnes@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-383-0277. Follow @JimBarnesLV connected Twitter.