[Hexadecimal]

After reading this entire thread, there seems to be a major stumbling block causing all this arguing. There seem to be two polar opposite opinions:

1.) X player won Y bracelets, and cashed Z tournaments. X is the greatest poker player ever.
or,
2.) Results don't matter.

To all those who hold position #2, you're fooling yourselves. The admonition to about being results-oriented is about being too results-oriented. That is, you can't be too wrapped up in the tournament-to-tournament results. You can't afford to miss the forest for the trees.

That said, position #1 has it's flaws, too. Poker is a constantly changing beast. You can't compare the fields of today to ones back in the pre-internet-qualifier, Binion-family-owned WSOP. Field-size does count. Different skill-sets gain in value as the field changes size. In shorter fields, a greater percentage of the time is spent not playing at a full table, and there's less of a chance of building up huge stacks off of the less skillful players just because there are fewer chips in circulation. Larger fields pracitcally require you build up your stack early in order to withstand variance, misreads of unfamiliar players, and later comfrontations with players who have skill advantages over you in certain areas.

I think Phil Hellmuth has proven himself capable of adjusting to the changes that have taken place in NL Hold'em tournaments in the past decade. I do think his results are a strong argument that he is the best Hold'em Tournament player (remember, not all of his bracelets are in No Limit). That said, there are enough valiables (frequency of tournament play, ITM finishes, final tables, 1st place finishes, tournament size, tournament winnings, etc.) in play in poker to make this an open-ended debate.