Jon-PokerVIP

Always up for debate as it is hard to name someone the best in the world at poker but we can look at different divisions such as heads up nl, live mtts and so on.

As an overall player who do you look upto the most and why?

For me Negreanu always has to be in this discussion as he has achieved so much and is doing better and better. Not many people can say that. I know Hellmuth has the most WSOP cashes/bracelets but Negs can play live cash a bit, seems to play a lot better than PH and i just like his attitude.

Also Ike Haxton for me is a bit of a legend. I didn't like his recent move of leaving PS due to the VIP changes as i feel it was the cowards way out in a way. He was probably not going to be offered a new contract as they are seriously thinning the herd and also the value of it was probably not going to be that high so i do feel he jumped before he could be pushed. HOWEVER having played live poker with him, listened to him discuss poker and railed him online + his mix of results over the last 10 years for live and online i have to say he is just incredible so for me i think i have to place him as my number 1.

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MattVIP

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I'm with you on Ike! He was the first player that really blew me away! His story is amazing. That insane bluff though! How can you not respect this lad?

Yeh this all in goes down in history as one of the sickest ever! The new Ike would never show this but he was just always very confident in his plays and understood the game on a whole new and different level.

For me Negreanu takes it all. Besides the research and effort he put in poker, he is of a really good personality that not many players can say about themselves.

AndrewTheBest: For me Negreanu takes it all. Besides the research and effort he put in poker, he is of a really good personality that not many players can say about themselves.

Yeh I think he falls into most players top 5 at least. but for most he is the number 1.

I never understand why people hate him. I guess because he is so comfortable in himself it may come across as ego sometimes.

For me he is very much needed in the poker world and he has brought hours of entertainment for me over the years.

I think negreanu is such a nice guy but I have to admit I use to love watching players like Dave Ulliot (great book by the way). Very very good hand reader and all round bad ass a I loved it when he blew his top against Americans.
Dusty Schmidt also blew my mind when I read his book and I know he's influenced a lot of players with his business approach.
I also love Stu Ungar. His book was the first autobiography I read and it blew my mind. Very tragic how he died in the end but my god, what a life he lived!
You can't call yourself a poker fan if you haven't heard of him, read his book and thought at one stage...... This is why I want to be a poker player!👍🏻 (minus the class A obviously).
There are so many that I could mention but they are a few that spring to mind straight away

Ike didnt leave his contract as it was over and he didnt resign with them, but he is in the talks with them to try and improve and understand why PS is making the move

The more I think over this, the more it looks like we have to separate the live players from those mainly playing online. I think we're all influenced by seeing the videos and live stream from big events which makes a bias towards live specialists such as Negreanu and Hellmuth.

What about Phil Galfond? He's undoubtedly one of the elite, highly respected by the other big names. But you don't see him at all the live events so he gets forgotten about.

When I started out with online poker, I instantly got hooked with the concept of MTTs and I played a tight style, I preserved my stack etc. A belgian friend of mine called me the Greek Phil Hellmuth so I started liking Phil and still do

Turlock: The more I think over this, the more it looks like we have to separate the live players from those mainly playing online. I think we're all influenced by seeing the videos and live stream from big events which makes a bias towards live specialists such as Negreanu and Hellmuth.

What about Phil Galfond? He's undoubtedly one of the elite, highly respected by the other big names. But you don't see him at all the live events so he gets forgotten about.

Yeh no doubt one of the best ever and a real pioneer of the game - some blame him for the game becoming so tough. Someone actually said to me the other day he doesn't win online anymore and has been on a breakeven/downswing patch for years. No idea what the truth of this is but is probs just bro talk. Never hear of him playing in the big live macau games either.

Jon-PokerVIP:

Can we ever really be sure who is crushing cash games? I'm sure there's a ton of multi accounting going on, as well as people having their results skewed by playing on different sites under anonymous screen names that we never hear about.

Some of the sample sizes that are thrown about for the nosebleeds are laughable as well. Can we ever be sure who is a crusher even for a single account on one site? I'll never forget having 120K hands breakeven as a 7bb/100 winner one time, these guys are fighting for tiny edges, and probably don't have any idea if they're winning either. Yet we all see silly numbers thrown about online , and start forming opinions which people read as accurate when in reality they're likely not.

Turlock:
Can we ever really be sure who is crushing cash games? (...)

No we can't even if you have access to millions and millions of hands. I even wrote an article about it

The best you can do is to make an educated guess and that's why I base my poker world sympathies more on a personality, overall achievements etc. than on the results. That's why I really like Phil Galfond, Daniel Negreanu, and Lex Veldhuis. I actually know Lex so I'm probably biased, but he's a hardcore degen with hardcore work ethic which makes him a perfect poker player archetype

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