who is the worst main event winner ever????

[Nem]

Raymer was one of the best strat posters on 2p2 and helped many people with their game. by all accounts he would be happy to still be posting in the strat forums but he started getting flamed massively after he won the WSOP so he had to stop. He gets respect cos of the hours he spent discussing hands on the internet.

Farha may be world class at omaha and other games but if his hands that were shown on HSP are any indication he ain't that good at NL HE cash.

I watched a whole episode of HSP for the first time last night and the final hand was Barry Greenstein AA vs Farha KK.

Great TV

[BrumBilly]

IMO Farha is easily one of the bestr cash players (if not THE best) on HSP. Have both series on hard drive. Unlike Harman, Esfandiari, Arieh and a couple others, he isn't transparent in his betting patterns/starting hands and doesn't play scared.

 

[byronkincaid]

when i first read all the HSNL forum slagging off the HSP players and saying they were fishy I thought they were talking complete nonsense, but thinking about it i think it's very possible that some of them are better NL HE players than Farha etc. They are specialists in one game and have probably played more NL HE hands in the last 3 years than farha has in his whole life. Also the amount of knowledge you can pick up from the internet is amazing. That's why you get people like Sbrugby or CTS moving up from 1/2 to the highest limits on the internet in less than a year.

I'm pretty sure that the best players on the internet have overtaken the live players now. Zeejustin crushing live donkaments is another (admittedly small sample size, high variance etc) example

[matt674]

Until i win a WSOP bracelet then i am not in a position to answer this question as they have something i dont. For me to label someone the worst ever world champion is a bit rich considering both my WSOP Main Event excursions ended before the end of the first days play.

Maybe when i win it one day there will be another name for you to consider!!

[Sark79]

when i first read all the HSNL forum slagging off the HSP players and saying they were fishy I thought they were talking complete nonsense, but thinking about it i think it's very possible that some of them are better NL HE players than Farha etc. They are specialists in one game and have probably played more NL HE hands in the last 3 years than farha has in his whole life. Also the amount of knowledge you can pick up from the internet is amazing. That's why you get people like Sbrugby or CTS moving up from 1/2 to the highest limits on the internet in less than a year.

I'm pretty sure that the best players on the internet have overtaken the live players now. Zeejustin crushing live donkaments is another (admittedly small sample size, high variance etc) example

What is a donkament?  .  I saw Dale write it in a post recently as well and I forgot to ask

[KingPoker]

Also the amount of knowledge you can pick up from the internet is amazing. That's why you get people like Sbrugby or CTS moving up from 1/2 to the highest limits on the internet in less than a year.

I couldnt agree more mate. I have railed Sbrugby on full tilt quite a bit and he absolutely schools gus hansen! No doubt despite what people like to think about how hard it is to transfer over to live poker from internet poker, i have pretty much no doubt they netters would ruin the lives pros, especially sammy 'fishy' farha!!!!

  KingPoker

[Zebediah]

How can you guys call Sammy Farha a fish?

Wish I was a s bad as him!

[JungleCat03]

when i first read all the HSNL forum slagging off the HSP players and saying they were fishy I thought they were talking complete nonsense, but thinking about it i think it's very possible that some of them are better NL HE players than Farha etc. They are specialists in one game and have probably played more NL HE hands in the last 3 years than farha has in his whole life. Also the amount of knowledge you can pick up from the internet is amazing. That's why you get people like Sbrugby or CTS moving up from 1/2 to the highest limits on the internet in less than a year.

I'm pretty sure that the best players on the internet have overtaken the live players now. Zeejustin crushing live donkaments is another (admittedly small sample size, high variance etc) example

The HSP players probably weren't playing their typical game seeing as they were in the unusual position of having their cash hands televised. Quite a few of them mentioned they had revised their strategy from series 1 to 2, aware that their opponents will have seen all their plays.

I realise the wsop coverage is heavily edited but some of daniel negreanu's reads were outstanding. Online or live, very few tournament players could have made those reads with such accuracy. I think it's generalising a lot to say the best online players have overtaken the best live, apart from the fact that many of the top players do both.

Zeejustin has done well so far live, and was always highly regarded as a tournament player online, even if granny-gate undermined his credibility in many eyes. Like you say though his initial success live is meaningless on its own.

I think someone like brunson deserves immense credit, for producing results in different eras with wildly different poker environments. And all after opening up his strategy to the world in SS. Adaptation's the mark of  a great to me. If brunson had been a stegasarous, the dinosaurs wouldn't have died out, but would be kicking our butts at deuce to 7 triple draw.

[byronkincaid]

I generalised too much. I'll shorten my post to-

The best short handed NL HE Cash game players are the relative unknowns (compared to Brunsen and Negreanu) playing high stakes on the internet.

IMO

[Sheriff Fatman]

The later winners will get far too much focus in any debate such as this, due to the relative amount of exposure they had.

Hal Fowler in 1979 is a name that I've often seen mentioned with regard to this question.  He was the first amateur to win it and nobody has ever seemed to be very complimentary about his play.

Sheriff

[thetank]

Reminds me of a good post from a while back.
The subject was on who the best UK player might be.

Here is a thought for you.....the unknown poker player!!!!!

There are many on line players that dont play many live tournaments and concentrate on on-line and live cash games, they play the occasional tourney and not always in the U/K. I know of several 2/4 - 3/6-5/10 nlh players who are making a very good living( over £150k pa)and never appear in any forum or magazine.

Before the WSOP there where many grifters who made a good living out of poker,today there equivilant are on the net. I am sure that poker will continue to be judged by rankings in tournies and quite right too. I do however believe that many of Europes top players are not even noticed through there own choice of using multiple on line names at differeent sites. So I believe the best players today are those that have earned a steady income and are likely to continue to do so.

My vote goes to one of those players.

[RichEO]

Worst main event player:

I think Gold is by far the worst. I don't mind Varkonyi being a geek or getting lucky, at least he is a nice guy (not that I know him or anything!).

Gold on TV just seemed like a total ****. Obviously I don't know him personally at all either, but I didn't like the way he smarmed his way through (and IMO borderline cheated a few times!).

I also don't think Gold was that good a player, he had a very amazing run of cards, which is where his luck lay. Rather than other players who sucked out a few times, Varkonyi, Moneymaker, Raymer and probably every winner really, it's a long tournament! Who needs to suck out when you get dealt the best hand almost all the time. It was probably exaggerated as I only saw the highlights, but he certainly got more than his share.

Allen Cunningham really had Gold's number and I was hoping he won. I didn't really believe Gold could call his reraise with KJ! If only Cunningham had been raising with a worse hand than 10 10, say KQ and he'd have doubled up and more on that hand and almost definately have beaten him. Gold's talking wasn't working on Cunningham and was giving away lots of information.

I'd much prefer a lucky, not very good poker player who is a nice guy (or girl) to win.

[thetank]

Still, the argument in his favour is quite compelling.

Who else has won this poker tournament without ever being all-in, even in the days where just a couple dozen guys showed up.

[KingPoker]

I just feel that evrything about GOLD is dodgy. He was pretending to be such a nice guy at the table saying things like "i told you to fold and i had the best hand, why did you call me there" like either he's your best mate and he wants you to win it or that you are meant to believe him and not go against him. He is such a sleaze, you can see why he is suited to being a hollywood talent agent. You can just imagine him saying "if you want the part you have to strip off in front of me, come on alan take your clothes off!" (i assume he's gay!). And thats without all the 50% cut that you just know he did actually agree too.

I think more than anything poker needs an ambassador for the 12 months proceeding the main event with him (or her maybe in the near future!)being a bit of a show man, approachable and being able to back up the Big Win with consistent play throughout and Hachem and also Raymer, i say were probably the best we will EVER see at that. They showed themselbes to be good winners and gracious losers. And to be fair in some extent Moneymaker was to. I would say he can be said to be responsiblke in a massive way for online poker kicking off like it did in 2003 after he won.

So you can say what you like about Gold and his poker ability but he will never have (if any at all) positive effect on poker this year. I dont doubt for a second he wont be in the news and magazines and threads all over the wold but i promise you it will be for the WRONG reasons!! (And poker at the moment doesnt need more bad press- between US online poker squabbles and british card room disputes!)

  KingPoker