Agreed..Which leads to the bigger question...What the heck happened to Jeff Madsen?????

As much as I like SC as a poster, I really agree with the OP here.

Really, don't we all post here because we think there is skill to poker? Anyone who can play poker and end up + money is a decent player at least. Anyone who can go and win 11 bracelets is a good player. By saying that results over a 19 year span don't matter, you are really saying that poker has no skill in it, and it's all luck.

Compare that to winning at slots. Sure, if I win over 19 years at slots, that is just pure luck, and variance should catch me.

Really, I thin Helmuth takes a ton of crap because he says he's the greatest player alive, so everyone wants to shoot him down. But, we all play for long term results, and he has them.

I think what SC was trying to say before was not that helmuth is a bad player, but that he does make a lot of pretty aweful plays, and is def not the best player in the world, he is a very good live player and was obv waaaaaay ahead of the learning curve but now I truely believe it has caught up to him

basically I would take durrrr's action in the HU match over helmuth in an instant

I would take Durr in a Heads Up Cash Game over Hellmuth too. However, I would bet on Hellmuth over Durr (not to single him out, just using your example) in MTTS.

I dont know too many bad players that have roughly 10 million or more in Lifetime Winnings. I guess you know your a supersta when people hate on you, granted he may have spotty play from time to time, but who doesnt make mistakes. A lifetime of consistent success has to be worth something especially since he has beaten big fields, small fields etc.

At the same token, there isnt too many online pros that are consistently tearing up the live circuit exactly these days, or even at WSOP events, so i think you def have to take that into consideration as a testament of Hellmuths ability. I think hes brilliant actually, similar to an actor. He portrays himself in a certain way to gain marketability "off the court", and "on the court" his antics play a role in his gameplan that he uses to his advantage. There are many that cant do this no matter how hard they try, and i think thats where the distraught comes from.

The fields are very, very soft. Hellmuth has had 20+ years of playing with the same awful players over and over and his live reads are nearly perfect. With all that experience of course he is going to be a huge favorite and have a lot of success. He has the leaks he has because he hasn't needed to fix them though.

dont those same fields include some of the better online players as well though.. It just sounds like a copout, especially when there isnt really online players that have comparable success. As i read in an earlier post, its so subjectable as of whos the best, and i think online players are almost always gonna stick up for other online players in stating that they are tougher all around and better than live, as well as vice versa opinions by live players. What cant be argued however is 10 mill in winnings min, 11 bracelets. He kills in the market game as well. Bottom line is there is nobody on here that can compete with any of those Facts. Sure alot of online players havent been playing relatively that long in the live arena so there is still alot of time not accounted for, but lets be real now fellas and call a spade a spade.

If Ivey made that play, guaranteed people would have been saying "greatest nlhe player ever, he reads souls" same shit.

I actually meant no ill will towards SC. I happen to agree with him the vast majority of the time. I just disagree with him about Hellmuth. I am not even a Hellmuth fan (dislike him really). However, in my opinion to claim he is not a good player (which he has done) is wrong. And the logic he uses (too small a sample size) could be argued if Phil had played 10 MTTs a day for his entire life. I do not think he is the best player ever. I never made that claim, but he is def. among the best live players in the world.

And Biko, him being a jerk has nothing to do with my post, although I do agree. However, keep in mind he says alot of the stuff many P5ers type in chat when they play online. He actually has the balls (and is a big enough of an a-hole to actually say them live).

In fairness to SC, he never said that Helmuth wasn't a good player. He did say there are probably 100 players better than him at MTT's.

Though, that statement in and of itself says something. If you are in the top 100 of your field (no matter where it is), you are likely doing very well for yourself.

Phil is one of the best MTT players of all time. You can't argue that. He also is a very good all around poker player and has great skills in several different poker games which makes him a good all around cash poker player.

I think the point that most people get caught up on or have an issue with is his NL Holdem cash game. I do not think he is even close to being a great player in this aspect. He is probably only just above the 50% average in NL Holedm cash games which still makes him a profitable player. However, when he does sit with some of the best NL cash players his weaknesses in this game do come out and he appears to be an inferior player in these circles.

So, if you take every aspect of poker including MTT's and other games, he is still one of the best, but his NL cash game is only average in these times of great cash players that are out there now......

Most of you don't realize that it's very very very possible for a great, even world-class player, to make mistakes.

You don't have to ride Phil's nuts everytime someone says "wow i don't think that's a good play" and explains why they think that way. You can give your reasoning as to why you think it is a good play (other than 11 braclets over and over again) and then we can all learn something from the discussion.

Everything Phil does is not perfect. Everything he does is not right. Just like everyone else in the world, he makes mistakes. Get over it and discuss his hands, maybe you will learn something from the other pro's on here that have some insight if you can stop yourself from shouting "11" long enough.

OP hit the nail right on the head here. Poker is a very complex game and as far as telling who is the best in the world that's almost impossible to do. There are so many different games, types of games, numbers of people in each game, the variables make it too hard to compare. My vote would either go to the late Chip Reese or Doyle Brunson as far as the best overall poker player is concerned.

However when it comes to NLHE MTTs there is absolutely no contest. Phil Helmuth is the greatest player alive today, and has to be considered one of the best NLHE MTT players that has ever played the game. No one else even comes close to the success he has had over his career playing in MTTs.

Ivey winning one game does not make him the better player. Ivey is great don't get me wrong and at this point we are splitting hairs a bit, but look at the body of work there is no way Ivey is better than Helmuth. Give it 10 years and let's see what happens, but right now Ivey is not as good at MTTs as Helmuth.

EDIT: Overall skill counting other forms of poker and cash games, Ivey is probably better.

That's just not possible when I can watch Philip Helmuth play poker and be like "I wonder why he's doing that?" and I'm not even a top ranked player. You can't go around raising 1/4 or 1/3 of your stack with mid pairs then fold to raises and call yourself better at poker than Phil Ivey, you just can't do it and be taken seriously. Helmuth constantly does that because he has these delusions of granduer or something about being to good to take +EV spots because he gets it in better, it's kind of silly and if he wasn't a master manipulator that gets people to play so much worse than him at his tables he would probably just be another fairly succesfull live pro.