Phil just took down event #13 or something, the 1500 nl holdem event for his 11th bracelet, be prepared for a show of arrogance unlike anything ever witnessed when espn telecas ts this thing.

I hate that guy. The only reason he has so many bracelets is because he plays in every tournament possible. Hes really not all that great and extremely overrated.

Burg, the WSOP has gotten so big it has permanently moved to the RIO. They are in their second week of three day events and the WSOP Finals that will draw between 8-10,000 entrants who put up $10K a piece to play will begin on 5 July. It will never move back to Binions. Way to big in popularity now. These players, many of whom are pros and have multiple millions in the bank, do draw the assorted whores like flys to honey.

I think that Stu Unger was hands down the best all around player. Too bad his crazy lifestyle killed him.

unger was great at tournaments, something like 29 to 34 percent WIN rate at buyins over 5000, but he had way to many leaks in his cash game and personal life to ever be a winning player, hellmuth albeit a fish in cash games to EVERYONE is an 11 time hold em champion, everyone of his bracelets is in hold em, but once again a complete fish in cash games, just this year he lost 536k to ivey playing chinese in one day.

edit video of him accepting his bracelet from doyle brunson and johnny chan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

great thread

There are a number of "bests in the world". Cash games, tournaments. But the "big guys" currently are Allen Cunningham, Phil Ivey, Cry Baby Helmuth, The "grinder" Mizrachi, Daniel Negreanu, and Chip Reese across a number of different games. This will be debated until the cows come home but these guys nobody will argue with.

this guys the best online CASH GAME player, he moved up from micro stakes grinding with a 300 dollar deposit in 2004/2005

to playing 200/400 300/600 online and just took like 1.5 mill off sammy farha in a heads up plo game at the bellagio.

edit link http://www.cardrunners.com/fusetalk/blog/index.cfm?forumid=31

Comparing cash games and tournaments is an apples and oranges argument.

All that cash and yet the guy can't buy one ounce of personality.

He has plenty of personality. It's just that very little of it is appealing. I actually don't mind him even though I could do without his "anytime you play a hand differently from how I would have played it your an idiot" attitude. I don't mind Matasow either. The only player that annoys me is Shawn Sheikon(spelling?). Jaime Gold was pretty annoying last year too but I don't know if I would really consider him a player.

you really cannot spell at all huh?

like seriously you aren't even very close

I met Helmuth when he was up in Vancouver last year and he was actually very friendly and gracious in person - not all whiny bitch we see on the TV tournaments.

Matasow, on the other hand, is a piece of shit.