Poker players on high stakes making bad decisions?

Question

I was watching high stakes poker and the famous Phil Helmuth wanted insurance on a pot he was all in with....which means he wanted to pay close to the proper pot odds of him being beat

he had 44 the other guy had 32 flop 4510....no flush draws involved

So helmuth asked around the table what are the odds of him losing...and none of them knew...and Jamie Gold whos a mathmatician said between 50% and 33%

helmuth ended up accepting the 33% and threw in an extra 5% to the guy insuring him

now here i am...not a mathamatician but im thinking they all totally out of their minds

straight draw odds are like 31.5% but the fact that the Phil had a set means u have to subtract the odds of the board pairing by the river which is 5%...so the real odds of him losing are 26%, which means helmuth should have only paid the 26% plus an extra 5% to cover the guy insuring the pot...so he over paid by 8% which is at least like 13k for a pot around 180k

Answer 1

If you remember back to the early broadcasts of the 2007 WSOP, (the non-main event tourneys,) Phil got into a long string of bets with Phil Ivey as to whether or not Phil H's hands would hold up. Phil I. kept giving him odds that were completely wrong (and knowing they were) and Phil H kept accepting them. I really don't think Phil H's pot-odds math is that good, he just does it for bluster and because he's an arrogant prick (this IS Phil Hellmuth, after all.) Phil usually just plays his cards (notice how often he'll fold to raises) and wins based on knowing their strength. He's never been much on draws.

Answer 2

I watched this episode last night and you have a good point. I'm under the impression that alot of the props that they make are mainly just for show. I think it's this type of action that attracts viewers to the show in the first place. It was either this or he's just been running bad (which I think he mentioned early in the episode that he'd lost X amount of dollars the day before).
In my opinion, though the odds weren't exactly accurate, they were close enough when you take into consideration the "heat of the moment" pressure. I think that he may have felt a little stupid when he hastily accepted the insurance offer to begin with, so in an effort to speed up the game, accepted whatever the quickest offer was.
He ended up winning the hand anyway, so the payoff for the insurance, though not accurate, wasn't a bad deal considering the amount of money he took from his opponent. I even think that Phil, being the type of player he is, would have accepted an even worse rate had it been the only offer available at the time.
Furthermore, I think you're correct in your assesment of them all being out of their minds, but I don't believe that it's actually their own money at stake in the first place. I would be willing to bet that a large percentage, if not all of it, is actually staked by sponsors.