ranking the main event winners

[DanielNegreanu 141]

This is a fun one that I'll try to tackle. A lot of it is based on heresay obviously:1.Johnny Chan2.Doyle Brunsom3.Stu Ungar4.Hamid Dastmalchi5.Huck Seed6.Johnny Moss7.Bill Smith8.Dan Harrington9.Carlos Mortenson10.Phil Hellmuth11.Jack Strauss12 Bobby Baldwin 13.Scotty Nguyen14.Jim Bechtel15.Sailor Roberts16.Noel Furlong17.Russ Hamilton18.Jack Keller19.Mansour Matloubi20.Chris Ferguson21.Berry Johnston22.Chris Moneymaker23.Greg Raymer24.Amarillo Slim25. Puggy Pearson 26. Robert Varkonyi27.Tom McEvoy28.Hal Fowler29.Brad Daugherty

[KDawgCometh 2]

I felt that Hamid was ranked really low on the guy's raning(remember I just stole that list). Now is that the half in the bag Bill Smith or the sober Bill Smith(or pissdrunk for that matter), and why Tom McEvoy so low? Where would John Bonetti be if he didn't run into Jim Bechtel's set of sixes, always a fun one to think about

[Mustangdood 0]

I can't believe you guys put Robert Varkonyi so lowRobert Varkonyi is the Bomb :canadarocks:

[clingfree 0]

Maybe I'm the only one who noticed this so far, but DN puts Moneymaker ahead of Raymer. Wonder why?

[augmented 0]

HOW COULD UNGAR NOT BE #1?????????this is the stupidest thing i've ever seen, if ungar is not number one who possibly is. why would he be worse than johnny chan or dan harrington or doyle? have you heard the stories about ungar? calling 32k with 10 high and winning? calling a huge bet with a pair of threes and raking the pot in the same motion? who could possibly be better than this guy. come on people.i think hellmuth is good, i think doyle is ehhhh, i think chan is good, harrington is good, and raymer is also good. he gets a bad rap but he knows how to play for sure. moneymaker isnt very good, this is true, but hes not terrible. whatever, just if ungar isnt 1 you guys are complete morons. come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

[qzpm 0]

Harrington at #7?  Harrington is certainly an amazing player but I think you have him ranked too highly.

this post exemplifies why people with little to no knowledge in a field should not be ranking top performers in said field.

To everyone who got on my case about saying Harrington should be ranked lower than 7th.....notice where Daniel ranked him. So maybe I wasn't as wrong as you thought?

[qzpm 0]

Harrington should probably be ranked higher.

Based on overall ability (best OVERALL player, ability to play & beat tournaments and cash games), there is no way Harrington ranks higher than Ferguson.

[DanielNegreanu 141]

HOW COULD UNGAR NOT BE #1?????????this is the stupidest thing i've ever seen, if ungar is not number one who possibly is.  moneymaker isnt very good, this is true, but hes not terrible. whatever, just if ungar isnt 1 you guys are complete morons.  come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Hmmm... guess that makes me a moron then, lol. I don't know why or how you assume to know that Stu Ungar was a better player than Johnny Chan. I have played with both (more with Chan obviously) and I think if you asked players who played with both they would tell you that Chan was better that Ungar. The fact that Stu died young and wasn't around for long stretches adds to his mystique. The guy was good when he accumulated a large stack of chips, but otherwise he was a major steamer. Chan is not only more consistent, he is more well rounded. I realize that you are obviously an Ungar fan, but if he were alive today he'd have to deal with a completely different form of poker. Wouldn't be as easy to bully his way through these fields today.

[epistemic 0]

Ungar should be about 15th. Playing NL Holdem well has nothing to do with playing O8 well. At least as little as Backgammon does.In fact you're probably better off being good at backgammon...

Smash,I think you need to take a walk and get some fresh air as your pseudo-intellectual rambling is starting to catch up with you. To say Ungar is anything less than 5th is absurd.To quote pokerpages:"Ungar is a three-time World Champion (with five WSOP bracelets). He won ten major No Limit Hold'em championship events (in which the buy-ins were $5,000 or higher). The next two guys in line, T.J. Cloutier (all-time leading money winner at the WSOP) and Johnny Chan (two-time World Champion), have won half that many. Amazingly, Ungar only played in about 30 of these championship events in his life! For years, the second largest poker tournament in the world was Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker. At that time, every great poker player attended Slim's tournaments. Like the WSOP, the main event at the Super Bowl of Poker was a $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold'em championship. Only one man in history captured titles at both the WSOP and the Super Bowl of Poker, and that man was Stu Ungar. And he won them three times each!"

[KDawgCometh 2]

Johnny Chan should be ahead of Unger. He is always in complete control and is just amazing at reading people. On Ivey's triple bluff on Johnny in PSI Johnny didn't have enough chips to repush Ivey off the hand, you can tell that Johnny smelled some rotten fish, but just didn't have enough to follow through all the way. I feel that He'll get to 10 bracelets before Hellmuth does as he is one of the most well rounded players and is a great short handed player(there are gonna be two short handed NLHE bracelets up for grabs this year). There is areason that Rounders focused on him and not Stuey

[bigedjr17 0]

There is areason that Rounders focused on him and not Stuey

Yeah, the reason is Stuey's dead..

[KDawgCometh 2]

There is areason that Rounders focused on him and not Stuey

Yeah, the reason is Stuey's dead..

Stu was still alive when it was being filmed

[augmented 0]

hmmm i kinda feel like a fool, i didnt realize that DN was posting on this.oh well, i guess johnny chan is truly ridic. the thing with doyle is that lately he really hasnt impressed me much.but, i will concede this: daniel negreanu knows a lot more than i do. i mean the thing with stu is that he won the wsop the first time he ever played hold'em, and then he won it again the next year. i know that he was a degenerate gambler, and i didnt know that that went into his actual poker game, i just figured that he lost a lot on golf or something because of his problems. i mean it just seems like to win 2 wsops in a row the first times playing holdem, and then the stories that i've heard about him...i just dont see how he could be anything other than the best.johnny hasnt done much lately, but i know the '87-88-89 feat was pretty impressive. by the way, daniel, please win a WSOP so we can end this discussion overall, hahaha. sorry about arguing with God.

[ddudley 0]

14.Jim Bechtel20.Chris Ferguson

Umm, what? I realize I've never played with these guys but I find this very hard to believe. From what I saw Bechtel got lucky to bust John Bonetti with that set of 6's. Bonetti seemed like he was a better player and also seemed to have those other two guys under control and would have won going away had it not been for that one hand. I can't see how you can rank Bechtel 14th when he didn't even appear to be the best player at the final table. And he's ahead of a guy who pounded his final table in like 35 minutes? I don't get it.

26. Robert Varkonyi27.Tom McEvoy28.Hal Fowler29.Brad Daugherty

Wow, I mean WOW!! McEvoy, Fowler and Daugherty must really, really, suck because I know Varkonyi sucked big time. He butchered a lot of hands in '02. I didn't think you could play that bad and win an internet tournament much less the biggest tournament in the world.Now I'm wondering if I should throw away all my McEvoy books before I read them and his sucking infects my brain.

[eboyd21 0]

in my opinion smash has lost all credibility with me....you can grind it out at low limits all you want but to say stu ungar is the 15th best main event winner ever is utterly retarded.....is just goes to show you can have a descent knowledge for the game and still have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to poker pros. keep grinding it out smash your doing good work but dont be jealous of a man who was ONE of the best nlhe tourney players ever because he didnt play micro limits. grow up and get a life other than posting in a forum all day ....your pathetic

[Hextall27 0]

Maybe I'm the only one who noticed this so far, but DN puts Moneymaker ahead of Raymer. Wonder why?

I noticed that too, and it surprises me. The more I watch last year's championship event, the more I respect Raymer as a player. Sure he got lucky in winning a lot of races, but we have to realize that he knew it was going to be a race everytime he got into one. He did a good job of reading the strength of his opponents' hand (at least in the hands we saw on TV). Others say that he just bullied his way through with the big stack. Well, he had to get the big stack first, and there's no way he totally lucked himself into that. He was even chip leader at the TOC for a while.That being said, I'm still not a fan of Raymer's, but it has nothing to do with his play; it's his image. Let's face it; the guy's a dork. All due respect, but those glasses are ridiculous. And what's with the beads? Is it Mardi Gras? I would rather see somebody with more of a "poker" image be the face of the game. (I don't even have to bring up the TOC when he asked Daniel for an autograph when Annie Duke was trying to get a read on him; that was classless!)In the few times I've seen him play since the 2003 championship, Moneymaker has not impressed me. Even then, I don't think he outplayed Farha. Everybody points to the "big bluff," but Farha made the right move there. He had a medium pair with an extremely scary board (3 to a flush and many straights). Every poker book I've ever read says sometimes you have to lay down the best hand. And that includes final tables at the WSOP as well as on-line micro limit tables. Anyway, Moneymaker's not a pro; he kept his day job, so I don't expect him to be as sharp as someone who plays everyday. But, still, he busted out early in every event he played at the WSOP last year.

[goldenbanana 0]

Pretty amusing that Daniel ranked McEvoy lower than Varkoni, haha. Talk about lack of respect. McEvoy may have gotten lucky when he won it but Varkoni is a total fluke.

[rkkkkjj 0]

hes gotta be on the bottom of the list come on, is AA that hard to play?

[dms26 3]

These rankings are kinda like watching a dog running in circles chasing his tail. Everyone is gonna have their own opinions, just like you can't compare Ruth to Barry Roids I mean Bonds.

[Petoria 0]

DN is right none of us have played with Stuey, but we can look at the statistics that tell us that he won about 40% of the major tournaments that he entered. I know Daniel went on a tear like that earlier this year, and Stuey did play smaller fields, but he made amazing reads on the best in the world. I think I'm going to give Daniel the benefit of the doubt on that one though.Chris Ferguson is a solid player and when he is on, he is probably in the top 20 in the world right now, and knowing that he absolutely destroyed WSOP events in '00 and '01, I think it's worth putting him higher on the list.I also feel that Greg Raymer isn't getting enough credit for what he's done. This isn't the first time Raymer has even cashed at a WSOP, while Moneymaker comes out of right field with a cool name and takes it down in his first year. There are 3 hands that Moneymaker needed to win that tournament and he was way behind in every one. Hand 1, Moneymaker 88 vs. Brenes with AA, Hand 2, Moneymaker set of Q's vs. Ivey 7's full, and Hand 3, the only one which i give him credit for, "the big bluff" as it was said. I understand that Raymer won every coin flip which came his way, but he made bluffs that the rest of us didn't even get to see. Not to mention, that if you look at the leaderboard on Day 1 of WPT events, you are very likely to find the name Greg Raymer very close to the top. He finally just found a tourney he could finish off. When he learns chip management in the later rounds of tourneys, he could become a very good player.Those are only really major qualms with that list, but I like the question, and I'm glad Daniel responded to it, to show all of us how stupid we really look from a pro's perspective.

[KDawgCometh 2]

26. Robert Varkonyi27.Tom McEvoy28.Hal Fowler29.Brad Daugherty

Wow' date=' I mean WOW!! McEvoy' date=' Fowler and Daugherty must really' date=' really, suck because I know Varkonyi sucked big time. He butchered a lot of hands in '02. I didn't think you could play that bad and win an internet tournament much less the biggest tournament in the world.Now I'm wondering if I should throw away all my McEvoy books before I read them and his sucking infects my brain.[/quote''']Fowler was really hopped up on Benzos to hide his nervousness. He got really lucky in his win from everything I've heard. As far as Jesus' win, honestly that was TJ's to lose in a way. That was his best shot to win the main event as he really out played Jesus and got in a position to win when Jesus sucked out on him to take it. TJ had closed the gap really well there. I thought that Carlos' performance was much better the next year on one of the toughest final tables in a while, also one of the most explosive. JMO

[JFarrell20 1]

I agree with Chan and Harrington as top 2, but how can you put Hellmuth in top 3, that guy hasn't even cashed since he won it, did he? It's all hype with him and yes he has won 9 bracelets, but we are ranking main event not WSOP in total aren't we?

I believe he finished 27th in '03. Field of 839 means he would have definitely cashed.