When you think of the word famous you automatically think of celebrities like Harrison Ford, mel Gibson and those sort of big names. Most people in the world know who they are? Now how many people really know the name, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreneau etc?
For a partial credit myself and a few classmates conducted a poll. We asked 700 random people between the ages of 18-35 walking down the street if they have ever heard of these named poker pro's. The results are beside their names.

Phil Hellmuth 21 out 700
Daniel Negreneau 27 out of 700
Tony G 6 out of 700
Tom Dwan 11 out of 700
Phil Ivey 15 out of 700
Chris MoneyMaker 29 out of 700

When asked about celebs like harrison ford and, Al Pacino etc every single person heard of them.

So in your opinion, the listed pro's above do you consider them, famous, semi famous or not famous at all?

I wish i had a name like Money Maker

What street were you on, obvy it wasnt LV Blvd

So you asked 700 people if they knew 7 poker players and then you asked them if they knew Al Pacino and Harrison Ford?

You have 2 major problems here with your polling

1) I doubt people who have time to answer yes or no to a silly poll like this are really the people that are relative in this world.
2) After your sample of people responded with "No" 95-99% for all the poker players you asked them, they are going to say "Yes" to anything/name they may have ever heard in their life... simply so they dont feel stupid like they dont know "anyone"
3) Your weighting is off for numerous reason.
4) Sampling errors: are you sure they were saying "NO, i dont know him", or were they saying "No **** off, im not playing your game street solicitor"

i could go on forever

15 out of 700 knew ivey??? i call bs

Just curious, what happened if you spoke to a guy on the street but he was actually 36? is he excluded from the poll? what about37? whats the cutoff for appearing to be in the 18/35 age bracket but actually being outside of it?

Also I wonder how many of the 27 confused Chris moneymaker with Goldfinger from the bond films.

Obviously this isn't a scientific sample, but I still think this is pretty informative. Thanks for posting it. I'm a little surprised Negreanu is more known than Hellmuth....I wonder where the people who know DN but not Hellmuth know him from.

Just to be clear we asked over 1200 people but only took the serious answers that were obvious legit. We didnt count someone who walked by and mumbled no. They spoke with us for a few minutes

The first thing we asked was " we are conducting a poll, if you have a few minutes and are between the ages of 18-35 we would appreciate your input" and went from there

Most of the answers that knew him were "isnt that the guy who won a bunch of money playing poker?

Those results are not even slightly surprising. You are comparing huge movie stars who are cultural icons (and have been for 30+ years) to guys who occupy a super tiny niche within the pop culture landscape.

And if 20/700 people recognize you, you're still probably more famous than 99%+ of the population, right?

Seems like pretty obvious information to me. Very few people are indiscriminately famous. What matters more in terms of branding is that you're famous within your geographic area, profession, or sphere of influence.

Example: Do you know who Yuna Kim is? Most people here would probably say no, but if you're a resident of South Korea, or if you follow professional figure skating at all, she's basically a household name, and was able to get a ton of endorsement deals as a result.

I think it's fair to call someone "famous" if they're well known enough that saying, "Hey, I'm ________" generates social status and financial gain.

I mean, if you poll women over age 50, very few of them will know who Lebron James is, but IMO he's still famous.

interesting thread. Most of my friends have no idea who these guys are. They are famous in the poker world and thats about it

Ha! The Phil's are not gonna like being behind Moneymaker....

Ottawa attitude in this thread.

This. Twitter is a good barometer as well. Daniel Negreanu is arguably the most popular poker player in the world, and he only has 163,439 followers. Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Shakira all have over 15,000,000 followers, with Gaga leading the pack with over 22,000,000.

Using these figures, Negreanu is 1% as popular as Justin Bieber.

Reformat the questions:

Have you heard the name Phil Ivey?

If yes>>What does he do?

Have you heard the name Zoey Dechanel (or however the F*** you spell it)

If yes, what does she do?

Have you heard the name blibbty blabbity bloooo

You'll get a more unbiased, realistic sample of what people do or do not know.

Kinda like how Kris Humphries is one of the 10 most Famous NBA players for the 2011-2012 NBA season but hes barely in the top 100 players skills/talent/legacy wise...

You have to understand what the audience is exposed to more and the mediums in which **** fed to them

PPA has over 1 million members, right? I'd assume the vast majority of PPA members know at least the biggest poker celebrities. That's 3%+ of USA population right there. So I'd think the popularity is a bit higher than your number would lead you to believe. It's def not mainstream though. And even 3% is nothing to scoff at. Qualifies for semi famous IMO.

+1. funny actually, yesterday I heard a friend tell me how he just found out who phil hellmuth is and how bad ass he is. I had a pretty good laugh. Anyway, koo thread OP

There are over 300,000,000 people in the USA; not 30,000,000.

I feel like moneymaker would be much more well known than tom dwan

Your poll might be a little flawed...The people on your list are all poker players so if people knew one of them they might guess at the others they don't know. Example if you ask me who Tom Cruise is I would say he's an actor if you ask me who Will Smith is I'm going to say he's an actor if you then ask me who somebody is that I don't know I'm going to guess actor. The numbers might be even lower.

Fact: you suck at polling.

Of course, he was on Letterman after all.

I think the pro's fame is overrated. Half of these schmucks are cash broke anyways. I think it's the big players in the game of pokes that are really raking in the dough, like the TV producers that use the pro's in their shows and whatnot.