Going Through the Motions
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Phil Laak caught out eye as we were counting down his stack, and he was kind enough to help us out. "Forty-niiiiiiine," he said wryly.
From the adjacent table, Phil Hellmuth decided to strike up a conversation. "Laak, you gotta go through the motions, baby," he said cryptically.
"Forty-nine diiiiiimes," was Laak's reply to that.
"Forty-nine? I got... like... forty-five hundred," Hellmuth responded (inflating his count by about 1,000 for what it's worth). "You got, like, ten times what I do. But I'm still gonna go through the motions, baby."
On the next deal, Hellmuth went through the motions -- of raising. He slid out 1,800 to commit more than half of his remaining stack preflop. A player in the blinds shrugged and re-raised him all in, and Hellmuth put his last few chips into the pot, now at risk of elimination.
The player in the blinds turned up 
, and Hellmuth sunk in his chair. "Dang. You got me in bad shape, buddy. I got king-eight." The Brat tabled his 
to prove it, and he was going to need some help to stay around.
And help is just he would get. The board ran 
, and both men play their king kickers. "Ah ha! Split pot!" It was indeed a chop-chop, and Hellmuth adds 675 chips to his stack by taking half the blinds and antes. That's not much, but it is close to 20% of The Brat's stack.