Riess said that he is the best so he gets my vote.

determining the best player in the world is an impossible question to answer, i don't even know why people keep asking it. first of all it's mostly just an opinion. then there's different forms of poker. best cash game player isn't going to be the best tourney player. best at nl isn't going to be best at plo. if you were to look at the best all around player, someone who has had success at all forms of poker, take for example jason mercier, there are plenty of people who surpass him at all aspects of poker, glafonds better than him at plo, isildurs better than him at cash, random tourney wiz is better than him at tourneys, so forth and so forth.

if you wanted to argue for a specific aspect of poker, lets say best at tourneys, you would run into a huge problem of measuring the best. you can take the top ten best tourney players and come up with some sort of score to measure thier ability based on poker knowledge, their scores wouldn't deviate in any substantial meaningful way to determine who's the best.

you guys should start titling these threads whos good at poker that is most popular