What would the equivalent of a NLHE PhD be?

[LearnedfromTV]

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engineer mba and a couple of the above posts are on the right track i beleive. one of my tutors explained to our class in very simplistic terms;

bachelor level = learning the theories and concepts
masters/honours = questioning the theories and concepts
PH.D = formulating your own concepts and theories

i'm not saying to be a poker PhD you must invent a new theory or style of play or formula to determine implied odds - but there must be such a deep understanding of the game and psychology that you are able to communicate ideas of others as well as your own, better than has been done before.

thus, solid posters, authors, etc. even players who shape the game and impact how it is played- all qualify

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I agree, but I think the class of player you would put in the phD class is pretty limited. Just beating, say, the 10/20 NL on Party, or at the Bellagio, and being able to articulate what you do there to win, isn't necessarily enough, because that is just beating one type of game within a particular time's set of game conditions. A lot of winning players are probably accidental winners, in the sense that they do what works for the game conditions they happen to play in without really understanding why what they do is successful - such players might fail if they faced players with different characteristics, or played different forms of poker, or played uncapped NL instead of 100BB cap, etc.

The poker PhD has to be someone capable of theoretical insight into the game, such that he can understand how to beat many different forms of poker, full-ring, six-max, shorthanded, headsup, holdem, omaha, stud, draw, etc, in different game conditions, and also be able to assess critically various strategies and understand why doing certain things works in certain conditions, rather than just being able to do them. If your goal is to make the most money, having this kind of understanding may not be necessary in a given time and place (right now you just have to know how to beat lots of bad players at NLHE to make a lot of money in poker.) But the PhD should go to people with the above characteristics who are also capable of articulating their thought process.

Beating 10/20 or 25/50 NL online and understanding how and why theoretically might be the equivalent of one graduate course, doing the same live another related course, beating PLO, LO8, etc, coupled w/ theoretical understanding, additional courses. And then, the PhD level work is stepping outside of the game conditions you have played in and studying game theory and psychology from a more general perspective such that you could feel confident in your mastery of a wide range of game conditions, or of a variant invented on the spot.

My sense is that something like this is what Sklansky strives for, more so than winning the most money. He's posted before something about the value of being able to win a "poker decathalon" including some standard forms and some on-the-spot invented forms, and about the value of being able to articulate general theory. Both of these are somewhat separate from making money, maybe in the way the partner at a law firm, a supreme court judge, and a law school professor have different goals with respect to their knowledge of the law. In some respects, poker theory is more interesting than poker practice.

To really draw a parallel to academia, I think you have to think of "poker" as the general practice area, because a poker theoretician doesn't really reach the level of mastery of a subject as an academic PhD unless he understands all games. So one couldn't get a "NLHE PhD", because NLHE is too narrow for mastery of it alone to qualify, although NLHE mastery would be a subset of poker mastery, and a poker PhD might specialize in NLHE.