Answer is probably trueteller, sauce or berri sweet. Will vote isildur for the memories

Honestly disgusted sauce, trueteller and berri aren't on this list.

woulda liked ot see more chip reese after the poker boom and into the 2010+ period

Chip Reese played the highest game in the room from 1974 to his death at age 56 in 2007. He knew the math, the theory, the psychology, and was extremely adaptive - with zero tilt.

He was known as a cash game player and only played very little tournaments because the tournaments were too small - and a waste of time - for him. The biggest tourney before he died was 10k buy in. Everything else was lower and a total waste of time.

And when they had a 50k tournament tournament for the first time, he won it.

It is not fair to say that Chip did not have a good tournament record, unlike the Hellmuth's, Cloutier's, and the Nguyen's. It was just a total waste of time for him. Not having many tournament wins is not a strike against Chip.

just because you don't play tourneys or aren't good shouldn't automatically eliminate you from contention for a list like this.

but yeah hes well regarded by everyone and one of the poker goats, which si why i would have liked to see him play after 2010

Phil Hellmuth
Daniel Negreanu
Phil Galfond
Phil Ivey
Doug Polk
Daniel "Jungleman" Cates
Tom Dwan
Isaac Haxton
Chip Reese
Patrik Antonius
Erik Seidel
Jason Koon
Fedor Holz
Stephen Chidwick
Justin Bonomo
Doyle Brunson
Johnny Chan
Stu Unger
Linus Loelinger
Viktor Blom


Brian Hastings is missing from this list.

I made a list of my CURRENT top 100 poker players and have Poker Bunny ranked 42. After tonights Hustler Casino Live Stream I moved her down to 58. Does anyone think that is an overreaction?

Yeah, Dwan kinda sucks...no way should he be top 20

has durrrr in his prime been discussed?

i assume he has because for his 2 year run, he was legit seemingly stomping on most NL players? businessman and pros alike? I assume he has to have one of the absolute highest peaks ever as a poker player that we know of no? against whales and stout pros. i guess you could say the same for ivey since he did it in multipe games too for a few years

Peak durrrr was seemingly good considering he did issue the durrrr challenge in order to get action. Then jungle dismantled him, and isildur took him for like 6 million. So that kinda fades. His "social impact" on poker might actually be many times greater than his actual accomplishments.

Also he was quite clearly ahead of the pack in those HSP episodes way back too, demolished that game really..

According to forum pros everyone is a fish. Phil Hellmuth says Dwan is one of a handful of natural born NLHE players , and I tend to agree

oh was that during durrs peak? makes sense that the new age of internet pros would be better than most of the players on HSP

I always rated durr highly for those 2-3 years and Ivey as well since ivey was supposedly crushing in mixed and NL, but then again, negranu, elezra, antonio, maybe werent as good as the new boom internet pros that didnt have the clout yet

How many tournaments do you estimate has Phil Hellmuth played lifetime? It can't be more than 5.000 right?

To me it just seems like a standard heater spread out over a few decades.

only true about isildur. linus holds down plo 1k-2k lobbies on GG, but dont think he plays mix. Trueteller won millions from phil ivey at mix games online pre-BF, and still plays the highest stakes mix live like 10-20k, also holds his own vs the top plo players at hu. The actual GOAT. excelling at all games both live at online is sick, berri is amazing but pure online player

I don't play online cash or anything resembling high stakes, but I wonder how much of that scene is just about data-mining HHs and looking for exploits based on what you find. I'm thinking of how Hastings and Townsend (and others?) colluded to analyze Isildur's HHs and then took him for a bunch of money based on that. It's smart, but I don't consider it a pure display of poker ability. It seems like part of the issue with becoming a massively successful online reg is that you are putting a lot of HHs into the ether, which gives people a lot of ammunition to break down your methodology and then tailor a system to exploit you. That may be why some of the guys have a hot run and then get crushed. If you are an Ivey, Dwan, or Isildur, you have a giant target on your back and these ultra tryhards will scheme against you.

Bobby Fischer talked about how chess became boring because as the game evolved it gradually became less about "skill" and more about rote memorization of move sequences. He created Fischer Random, a variant of chess where the starting place of the pieces is randomized, as a counter to that. The idea is that when the pieces are in random places, you can't just rely on memorization and study to play the game. You have to dynamically break down an incredibly huge and various set of situations.

That aligns with the type of poker skill that I respect more than just memorizing spots and studying lines. I'm sure those SHRB types play NLHE really well, but if you invented a new variant on the spot and forced them to learn on the fly, would they have an edge over the Ivey, Bryn Kenney, and Isildur types who seemingly ride on natural ability more than study? Is the best poker player someone who has learned 1-2 variants to an expert level, or someone who can play any game well with very little preparation or experience? It's an interesting question.

I don't mess with mixed games much and I don't know that world at all, but as someone in the peanut gallery, I'm pretty impressed by what Adam Friedman has done in the 10k dealer's choice at the WSOP, winning it 3x in a row. That seems more impressive than anything Johnny Chan or Stu Ungar ever did in poker.

great post!

Winning any tournament three times in a row is a show of absurd rungood more than anything, no matter how big your edge may be.

That is really impressive and never even heard of those results before this post. I think most of the modern day top guys online could and even with just telling them the rules be better than 75% of an average field in most games of poker. Of course the mechanics of flop games are going to carry over better for top guys use to playing flop games as will the mechanics of say a top Stud player moving over to Stud HL or Razz but mechanics are going to carry over quite well for the top player' minds. The level it takes to be at the top in any game these days is just so high that these players have developed very solid mechanics for their game that often transfer over in some way and other times very well to other game variants.

Doug is a dirtbag for even allowing himself to be on this list (while tearing down Durrrr no less.) Shameful but right on par for the guy.

i like doug, but he gets super emo - just see his half hour tollerene rant video when he could have summarized it all in 2 minutes

but it's super transparent this is a thinly veiled effort at establishing himself in the poker pantheon while at the same time giving free reign to criticize and snub the people he doesn't like

Top four of fan list was no surprise - Ivey, Daniel , Doyle and Hellmuth. Undoubtedly biggest four names in terms of broad name recognition. Linus was a surprise fifth though.

I suppose even casual poker followers have heard that he is considered the best NL player right now, which matters to them. Also they probably felt the need to "balance" their top 5 with one online specialist.

Ivey, Ike, Galfond, Trueteller and Jungleman is my top five.

Doug Polk (with Kane Kalas) just revealed the final standings as voted by their viewers as the greatest poker players of all time:

Ivey

Negreanu

Doyle

Hellmuth

Linus

Jungleman

Stuey

Galfond

Durrr

Chip

Polk

Seidel

Haxton

Ilsidur

Fedor

Antonius

ZeeJustin

Chidwick

Koon

Johnny Chan

This is spot on. Regarding Dwan, anytime his name comes up Doug aggressively discredits his game and almost always bring it back to the Durrr challenge with Jungleman not being completed. I like Doug and I'm not defending dwan walking away from it. But we get it, 10+ years ago you felt Jungle was better and you ended up not getting validated and missed out on cashing those bets. That sucks but it has little to do with a top players of all time list.

He also didn't like the legend status Durrr had achieved though wrecking the HSP games and probably always had to tell anyone who brought Durr up that he 'wasn't as good as you think'.

There was a bunch of chatter on twitter about this and seemed most ppl pushed back on Doug's durrr rant. As you say though, it's all super transparent and kind of funny how he doesn't realize that.

Doug certainly places himself above Dwan which is extremely risible

100% of all Full Tilt Poker Trust Fun Babies should be banned from any "greatest poker player of all time" lists. They are all just one notch higher than Dan Bilzerian.