I was skimming through the Hendon Mob's all-time money list (yes, sadly, I have that much time on my hands), and I noticed that there were some one-hit wonders mixed in with some well-respected tournament pros. Big revelation, right?

Well, a lot of the players on that list have only won one or two big tournaments, and have flopped in all of their other showings. Out of curiosity, I went through the top names and subtracted their biggest win from their total winnings to see what the list looked like (yes, I really, really have a lot of time on my hands). Below are the results, which I guess I'll dub the One-hit Wonder Adjusted All-Time Money List:

1) Phil Hellmuth - $8,831,464
2) T.J. Cloutier - $8,364,155
3) Daniel Negreanu - $8,022,126
4) Men Nguyen - $7,620,024
5) Phil Ivey - $7,009,408
6) Scotty Nguyen - $6,912,939
7) Erik Seidel - $6,503,708
8) John Juanda - $6,172,956
9) David Pham - $5,704,174
10) Allen Cunningham - $5,658,197

I just made this calculations not too long ago but haven't checked my work, and it's entirely possible that I made some stupid arithmetic mistake, so if you find one, please point it out here.

I think this is a better reflection of who are the best performers in tournament poker over the years. I think that later I'm going to lengthen this list and create a two-hit wonder list (i.e. subtract the two biggest wins from a player's total).

Anyway, I was wondering if you guys thought that this list has any value, or if you have any other ideas as to a good way for adjusting the money list to account for players who've just gotten really lucky in a tournament or two.

Divide those numbers by pi IMO

yes, i do think this has merit. and it's very interesting....

I think the list is good in that it shows the names of good turnament players who for a long time have had success on the tournament circuit.

Seriously though:

Maybe divide the numbers by years played (count years played as every year a player had a cash)?

B/c while PH is on top here, he may have played 3x as many years as say #13 or 14 on the list.

The only truly accurate way to get understand how good these guys really are would be to know how many tourney's they busted out of the money in. And weigh the skill level of the tournaments (HORSE> ME or $2500 NLHE) But I'm afraid there is no such record.

Still I'd say this list is pretty interesting. And I appreciate the work.

Any list that excises jamie gold is a good list.

what does it show? that some big name players have won a lot on the circut? it has no bearing on how much people have won playing donkaments. a lot more accurate system would be to show number of cashes or number of wins. if hellmuth won 1 12mil tourney and 64 300k tourneys would it count the same as a guys who wins the 2 mil 7 or 8 times, always number one. the data you are showing is flawed and biased. DUCY?

This is a good idea, and the results are interesting. There probably would be a way to make a better formula, but this is definitely a good idea.

Hachem should be in that list IMO. Considering his short time as a "pro" his results are quite impressive.

OK, I just got done making a top 40 list. Slogging through these numbers is a much bigger pain in the ass than I expected. As before, it's entirely possible that I made some mistake on this list, so please point out any errors if you find them. Here it is below:

1) Phil Hellmuth - $8,831,464
2) T.J. Cloutier - $8,364,155
3) Daniel Negreanu - $8,022,126
4) Men Nguyen - $7,620,024
5) Phil Ivey - $7,009,408
6) Scotty Nguyen - $6,912,939
7) Erik Seidel - $6,503,708
8) John Juanda - $6,172,956
9) David Pham - $5,704,174
10) Allen Cunningham - $5,658,197
11) Johnny Chan - $5,426,606
12) Mike Matusow - $4,950,557
13) Dan Harrington - $4,909,651
14) Eric Lindgren - $4,689,757
15) Chris Ferguson - $4,656,949
16) Justin Cuong Van Tran - $4,562,570
17) Carlos Mortensen - $4,514,831
18) Barry Greenstein - $4,413,266
19) Humberto Brenes - $4,330,963
20) Michael Mizrachi - $4,090,056
21) Gus Hansen - $4,085,192
22) Doyle Brunson - $4,079,522
23) John Cernuto - $4,035,237
24) Ted Forrest - $3,939,560
25) Dave Ulliott - $3,897,640
26) John Bonetti - $3,806,593
27) Dewey Tomko - $3,749,087
28) Hieu Ngoc Ma - $3,611,819
29) Freddy Deeb - $3,369,059
30) Marcel Luske - $3,274,045
31) Howard Lederer - $3,180,736
32) Kathy Liebert - $3,104,251
33) Chris Bjorin - $3,070,231
34) Joe Hachem - $3,029,897
35) Layne Flack - $2,985,010
36) Bon Pham - $2,907,674
37) Ram Vaswani - $2,888,077
38) Jack Keller - $2,867,475
39) Alan Goehring - $2,839,433
40) Hasan Habib - $2,826,191

I'll probably try more out with this later.

I admit that this system is far from perfect, and there is probably lots of room for improvement in my method, but I still think that is a better reflection of tournament results than the simple all-time money list.

In the mean time, if you guys have any other ideas on how to make some sort of list to compare tournament pros, feel free to post it along with your calculated results if you have them.

Looks about right.

Sometimes I forget Mike Matusow wins.

Who are these two ? Never heard of them ...

JC Tran and Tony Ma.

Yeah, thanks for doing this. I think I've heard people mention this before but I don't remember seeing an actual list. Well done.

No surprises I would say. If you have some more time on your hands, how about extending the list to 25?

Good post.

Nevermind. You're a dynamo!