No surprises that he has been found out. Always an overrated donk in my books who continuously puts himself into bad positions.

I think that wrt to HU on-line cash games 'the best' = king of the hill, top of the pecking order. You're acknowledged as the best by your peers and/or they refuse you action. If you instill fear in them that's even cooler.

Isildur clearly established himself as the best HUNL player a few years ago when he busted the best players on several sites before crushing Dwan. The problem is ofc that when you get to the top it's really hard to get action so the smart players move on. As you know, Isildur moved on to plo and mixed games while Dwan found some sick action and billionaire whales in Macau.

+1

i'd have to say not never ever.

Of course it's probably intransitive if we're to rank every player. But you're saying there's probably never a player that can beat every other player? I think there was a time when Dwan could and I think there's good reason to believe that WCGRider can at the moment.

I think one has to ask themselves this; Would I sit down with my own money to play him?

the fact that i wouldn't fight george foreman doesn't mean he's the best boxer alive.

If pro A has an edge of 0.5 bb / 100 over pro B, and an edge of 5 bb / 100 over fish C, yet pro B has an advantage of 10 bb / 100 over fish C then who is the best player? Based on what you are saying it would be pro A based on the criterion that he has a positive edge over every player, and I am sympathetic to that view myself, but I recognise it isn't the only possible criterion.

Wasn't Dwan a Full Tilt PR campaign to make young players go ultra aggro and think they can beat any other player in the world and became millionaires?

Those HSP, PAD seasons and poker media hype sure made wonders for the Full Tilt ghost vaults and their shady board

he was THE best. Now who knows?

I know winning players who regularly play in Bobby's room who think Daniel plays very well.

Again, I think we are talking about two different things. Cash games vs. online and No Limit Holdem vs. Mix games.

I wouldn't be surprised if Daniel is a big dog to the best online players in NLHE or PLO. But I'd be shocked if wasn't a favorite in almost all high stakes cash games.

When people criticize him as a calling station, that's a big leak in NLHE, but he's a smart guy and makes excellent reads, and that's probably enough to overcome that leak in live NLHE games unless it's a very tough lineup.

But being a calling station in limit games is not necessarily a leak at all and sometimes can be optimal, obviously depending on the games/lineup & how big a station you are. And most high stakes games are Mix games where NLHE and PLO are rarely included, and when they are included often capped, which would be to a stations advantage.

Beyond what I've heard from high stakes players, I'm also pretty sure Daniel grinded all the way up from small stakes playing mostly limit games. To me that's additional evidence he's a very strong player. I've talked to specialists who have criticized small areas of his gameplay in their specialty, but it's always "he's not as optimal as he could be" and the conclusion is he's not pretty good, he's very good in their game. For a generalist playing mix games, that's a pretty huge compliment.

Maybe Daniel isn't strong enough in NLHE and his perspective on Tom Dwan's game isn't useful. But outside the NLHE universe there are actually quite a few people with a clue who regard Daniel as a very strong player, and beyond that, a very good thinking player.

And if you think about what I wrote here, you'll realize that it's pretty clear there never will be a "best ever" even for the moment, except maybe in a single poker game specialty.

One Daniel story. I had a friend who at the time (and probably still) was arguably one of the best cash players the world in a specific game (online & live), and was playing a WSOP event for that game with Daniel at his table, who he had never played with before. They walked out of the room together for dinner break, and he said to Daniel, "Can I ask you a question?"

Of course the ever accommodating Daniel says yes. So my friend says, "You seem so smart, so why do you suck so badly at this game?"

Daniel laughs and says, "oh, is it because I do xxx instead of yyy, and constantly do zzz and qqq?" My friend says, exactly, those were exactly the spots I thought you play poorly. So as Daniel goes into a deep discussion of Tournament chipEV in those spots and why he was deviating from what he and my friend knew as optimal play. My friend listened and by end of discussion he was so blown away that he actually tweaked his own play before the final table based on his discussion with Daniel.

I'm pretty sure there are many specialists in each different poker game that can outplay Daniel in their game. I doubt whether there are more than a few players in the world who can outplay Daniel over many different games across cash and tournament settings.

everyone ends up being a degenerate action junkie at the end.

Not everyone, but the kinds of qualities that propel you up quickly tend to be the same qualities that prove to be your downfall. Poker pros that don't have a gambling personality will never get to the top, and they certainly don't make for good HSP viewing potential, but they're also the kinds of pros that are least likely to wash out.

LOL you're adorable.

Ridic great post. Can't say enough how great it is.

Mods need to give this guy a warning. Posts this interesting and insightful have no place in NVG.

Yeah i'd bet Daniel is a lifetime loser in poker but he's propped up by his Stars deal. He posted a graph for his 2014 tourney results.

2014 Totals
Events
44
Cashes
12
Hours
416
Buy-ins
$2,931,661
Payouts
$10,247,143
Profit
$7,315,482

If he didn't cash in the One Drop, he would be down $1,000,000 in tournaments this year. I think it goes to show he's a losing player since he's essentially bragging about his profit this year but without the One Drop, he wouldn't even be close to breaking even.

Is this a serious post? How many tourney players do you think have a great career if you took away their biggest cash of every year?

How would the unwashed masses even determine who is the best Poker player? I mean people can only look at results or a tiny sample of tv hands, and both methods seem pretty terrible to me

which is longer, never ever or

Yeah but Daniel only had 50% (or less) of himself in the One Drop so his "profit" figure is clearly not accurate. Daniel has almost $30,000,000 in WSOP tourney cashes but maybe he's bought in for $35,000,000 over the years, who knows?

At least with Dwan when he played high enough you could see his online cash results. For Daniel, no one really has any clue how he fares in cash games. I think I looked up his online cash graph years ago and it was pretty terrible.

There were strat threads when that hand first aired that disagreed a great deal with that.

He was playing HS before Full Tilt existed, so that's one hell of a long con.

My gut feel is that by "best", we mean "most highly regarded by experts in NLHE". I read through a bunch of 2p2 archives from 05-07. If we use the definition above, I'm pretty damn sure he was the best during a ton of that time period.

Also, I think the lack of respect shown for one of the pioneers of no limit should be noted. Take a trip down memory lane to 2005, when the most high stakes players would probably be massive fish today. Tom was saying things like "Its optimal to fold some % of the time, call some % of the time, and raise some small % of the time" That was pretty ground breaking **** at that time. Now that tens of thousands of players have expanded on that knowledge with HUDs and what not to make even better decisions and do those options an even more optimal %. Now we all have the nerve to act like that initial time period never happened.

Now that these geniuses and tough guys are fairly certain they can rock him at no limit, respect gets thrown out the window. And modern day is completely irrelevant, he's past climbing through stakes. And lol at negreanu's sentiments. Like bro, we saw high stakes poker, and small sample size or not, there was no chance you weren't horrible at no limit.

Dwan is the best at keeping his mouth shut