who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

who is the best tournament player in your opinion?

Post deleted by Ryan Beal
 

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

PH

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
PH

[/ QUOTE ]

Post deleted by Ryan Beal
 

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Phil Helmuth I guess is PH.

I don't really know who the best is in a tournament. Who cares, they're for donks anyways. :P :P

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Shannon Elizabeth, and it's not even close.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

you are buddy

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Very difficult to say anyone other than Phil Hellmuth, given the length of time he's dominated the field.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Jerry Yang, followed by Jamie Gold, Joseph Hachem, Greg Raymer, and Chris Moneymaker

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

List of people who qualify:

Phil Hellmuth (obv.)
Joe Hachem (since he won the ME a phew FT's + Five diamond win)
Daniel Negreanu (obv.)
Phil Ivey (obv.)
Chris Ferguson (obv.)

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Phil Hellmuth
Allen Cunningham

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Right now, definitely Hellmuth.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

matusow

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Jennifer Tilly


She won a bracelet and poker isn't even her fulltime job.

Post deleted by Mat Sklansky
 

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
She is awesome, i agree.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
She is awesome, i agree.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep

[/ QUOTE ]

Look at Phil Ivey's face, lmao. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
Shannon Elizabeth, and it's not even close.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

cant see why PH should be the best...
apart from the fact that this question is total bs, the answer PH is bs too.
so why should he be the best? because he has 11 bracelets? hm well he just won like 3 or 4 of them in the 21st century [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
there are several others who won more...
(ok i gotta admit i dunno whether someone has one more than PH in holdem only [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] but nevertheles....)
well there are a lot of really good players out there.
cunningham, negreanu, ivey... and never forget about the online players... pr1nn, aba20....

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Brad Booth of course.

He sat down in the High Stakes Poker TV Show with a Cool Million

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

phil hellmuth is the best nl holdem tournament player currently and of all-time and its not even close

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

NL tournament player is Phil Hellmuth. Though Allen Cunningham is close.

As for cash: prob Brian Townsend.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

God this thread tilts me. Results do not mean you are the best. If you were asking who has the best results in NLHE, yes, these people would be correct. There are way better NLHE tournament players than hellmuth under the age of 25. At LEAST 10.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
God this thread tilts me. Results do not mean you are the best. If you were asking who has the best results in NLHE, yes, these people would be correct. There are way better NLHE tournament players than hellmuth under the age of 25. At LEAST 10.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Gobbo, maybe we can salvage something out of these types of threads [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

What do the "players under 25" you have in mind understand about tourney poker that the oft-mentioned "best" TV players don't?

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

for the record, "best" wasn't referring to number of bracelets or winnings, because these do not necessarily indicate skill. Many of the worlds best poker players usually don't rank too high in larger tournaments due to the luck factor of poker.

As for my answer, I'm still not sure who I think is the best. When I made the topic I had Allen Cunningham in mind, along with PH and Daniel Negreanu. Jesus is also up there.

And I don't know how well liked he is on these boards, but I think Scotty Nguyen is a really good player.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
God this thread tilts me. Results do not mean you are the best. If you were asking who has the best results in NLHE, yes, these people would be correct. There are way better NLHE tournament players than hellmuth under the age of 25. At LEAST 10.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spoken just like someone who only came in second place [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Alex Jacobs

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
She is awesome, i agree.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Look at Phil Ivey's face, lmao. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]




He always looks like that hahaha. Phil definitely gets my vote for best NLH player; although I'll agree that Jennifer Tilly has developed some skills!

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
God this thread tilts me. Results do not mean you are the best. If you were asking who has the best results in NLHE, yes, these people would be correct. There are way better NLHE tournament players than hellmuth under the age of 25. At LEAST 10.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Gobbo, maybe we can salvage something out of these types of threads [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

What do the "players under 25" you have in mind understand about tourney poker that the oft-mentioned "best" TV players don't?

[/ QUOTE ]

They don't completely suck when playing with less than 20 bb stacks.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Allen [censored] Cunningham

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
phil hellmuth is the best nl holdem tournament player currently and of all-time and its not even close

[/ QUOTE ]

Of all-time? I think you're missing somebody:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/im...nd-Posters.jpg

If he didn't die young, we'd be calling him the best of the best.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

lol, saying Stu Ungar is the best tournament player ever is like saying Prahlad Friedman is the best NL cash player ever.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

For some reason people choose to rag on Stu Ungar and deny his was the best tourney player. If you read One of a Kind or have heard/read interviews with highly respected poker players who have been around a long time, namely the Godfather himself Doyle Brunson, they say Stu was by far the best tourney player when he was on his game and its not even close. That said, Doyle would have more bracelets than Phil Helmuth if he had played as many tourneys in his heyday. And when its all said and done, Allen Cunningham just might rule all.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Stu Ungar for sure..
"He is the only three-time winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event tournament (Johnny Moss also won three WSOPs but his first win was by vote of the players, not by winning a tournament)."
"Ungar also won the main event at the now-defunct Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker in 1983, 1988 and 1989, when it was considered the world's second most prestigious poker title."

Sexton:
"Ungar is a three-time World Champion (with five WSOP bracelets). He won ten major No Limit Hold'em championship events (in which the buy-ins were $5,000 or higher). The next two guys in line, T.J. Cloutier (all-time leading money winner at the WSOP) and Johnny Chan (two-time World Champion), have won half that many. <font color="red"> </font>

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Stu Ungar for sure..
"He is the only three-time winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event tournament (Johnny Moss also won three WSOPs but his first win was by vote of the players, not by winning a tournament)."

[/ QUOTE ]

It is foolish to be so results oriented. In one of those wins, Stu hit a three outer to a straight against Doyle. Winning bracelets has always (even in the early days) included tremendous amounts of sheer luck.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]

It is foolish to be so results oriented. In one of those wins, Stu hit a three outer to a straight against Doyle. Winning bracelets has always (even in the early days) included tremendous amounts of sheer luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's surely lots of luck in MTTs. Unger was lucky ten times. How many others made it to the heads-up part of the tournament ten times?

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

The guy won 1/3 of the tournaments he entered!!!

"In one of those wins, Stu hit a three outer to a straight against Doyle. "

Ya, and what's your point? This "luck" is essential to win tournaments... When Raymer won, how many "coin flips" did he win? 50%.. NOT; he won a majority of them even though the natural odds were 50%.. That's poker!

Stu won 10 TIMES!!!
If a NFL team won the SuperBowl 10 times in a 30 year period.. Would you discount them as the best football team ever, "don't be results oriented", "they had that one lucky fumble"

BTW, the natural odds to win the SuperBowl would be 1 in 32 chance, a lot lower odds than a single individual to win a Major Poker tourney (~1000:1 ?)
Taking the field sizes into account (32:1 vs 1000:1) it would be like winning the SuperBowl 29 out of 30 years..

Even with 29 out of 30 wins, would you still argue they weren't the best football team because you can't focus on results?

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Sexton:
"Ungar is a three-time World Champion (with five WSOP bracelets). He won ten major No Limit Hold'em championship events (in which the buy-ins were $5,000 or higher). The next two guys in line, T.J. Cloutier (all-time leading money winner at the WSOP) and Johnny Chan (two-time World Champion), have won half that many. <font color="red"> </font>

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice and up to date, that's what I like about you.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

Also keep in mind most of the tournaments Stu won had less than 100 people in them and less than 10 of those were even close to being good by today's standards.

Re: who is the best NL hold\'em player?
 

[ QUOTE ]
"lot lower odds than a single individual to win a Major Poker tourney (~1000:1 ?)

[/ QUOTE ]

That's either idiotic or deliberately misleading. Ungar never won a tournament with 1000+ runners. Which isn't his fault, because there weren't any back then. Ungar's WSOP wins were in fields of 73, 75 and 312. He also won $10K tournaments with field sizes of 20, 15, 29, 21 and 22 (these are estimates because I don't know the exact rake but they're no more than 2 or 3 off).

Source

The oft-stated fact that he won 10 major tournaments "out of 30" is entirely anecdotal, we don't know how many he really entered or how much selection bias was applied (if he won it, it was counted as a major, if he didn't, we don't know).

By all means state your opinion that Ungar was the best. But if you're going to back it up with statistics, do so fairly.