It's common to ask the question, "Who's the best poker player?" People love to talk about it, and ask other players their opinions. Pros generally say that Phil Ivey is the best poker player. It's certainly hard to argue with that answer, given is results for tournaments and cash games over the last few years.
Others have given their opinions. ESPN has a feature called "The Nuts". Every month or two, they ask various members of the poker media who they feel are the best players, and then tallies the results into a Top 10. This is usually a list of whomever is doing the best in recent tournaments, and the current #1 player is Jason Mercier.
The newly formed Epic Poker League has created the Global Poker Index, which uses some NASA-size mathematical formulas to determine who's the best player. Right now, it's Bertrand 'Elky' Grospellier.
Poker magazines like Bluff and Card Player have various Player Of The Year rankings. Each POY ranking has a different player as #1, depending on what criteria they use.
This question isn't just for the Pros. My former Home Game group has the question "Who's the best player in the group?" pop up occasionally, and there was never a consensus as to who it was. Naturally, I was never in the discussion. (Oh, no. I'm not bitter.)
Personally, I find this whole conversation pointless. I think it's a stupid question for two reasons.
The first reason is one I've already written about. The term "Poker" covers many different games. Can anyone be the best player at every possible version of Poker? Can anyone be the very best player at Heads-Up Limit Hold'em, 6-max PLO, and tournament 7-Card Stud-8?
Of course not.
Certainly, a player can be very good at many different versions of Poker. Hell, I'm actually decent at many poker games, but I'm better at some of them simply because I play them more often. Well, it's the same thing with the Pros. No matter how good they are at all the games, they will run into trouble when they play against a specialists at a particular game. Larger cash games are usually a mix of many different games, so that a specialist can't have an advantage when playing his game.
The other reason that "Who's the Best Player?" is a stupid question is Variance. As many players know, Luck is Short-Term and Skill is Long-Term. Naturally, the obvious question is, how long is the Long-Term? Is it measured in months, years, or number of hands? Truthfully, nobody really knows because it's all a mathematical concept.
But what we do know is that Poker is a streaky game. I've been in Reno for ten months, and I've already had a few Hot Streaks and Cold Spells. It's a normal part of the game, especially if you're a tournament player. It's not uncommon for those streaks to last weeks, months, or even years.
A great example of this concept is Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi. In 2005, he had an insane tournament year, winning two WPT events and the WPT Player of The Year. And then he vanished. Well, not really vanished. He continued to play tournaments, but didn't have any news-worthy results. And then in 2010, he made four Final Tables in the WSOP, including 5th in the Main Event and 1st in the $50k Players' Championship.
Did he become a bad player, and then got better? Of course not; it's just the nature of Poker. Granted, it's more noticeable in tournament, but it still happens to all of us in cash games.
1 comment:
Best all around tournament player, in my opinion, is Eric Seidel. Eight bracelets in at least 5 different games speaks for itself. And that's just his WSOP record.
Best all around cash player? Hard to say, maybe it's Phil Ivey, maybe it's Derr, or any of about 20 other amazing players.
But by and large I agree with you, it's almost pointless to try and identify the, so-called, 'Best'.
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