I've had this debate with some people in CR and other poker communities and would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

The debate is who the Top 5 players are in the poker world.

It's difficult to quantify "best" poker player as there are several different metrics to measure one's success: amount of cash won, longevity in the industry, World Series of Poker Bracelets, etc.

I'd say that the top 3 on my list below are universally agreed upon:

Phil Ivey - Widely regarded as the best in multiple forms of poker, he plays for the largest stakes possible. He has silenced the doubters by focusing his efforts on winning WSOP Bracelets in recent years and has been winning them at a historic pace. He's also the largest winning player in online poker over the last few years, so he is clearly a force and one of the best.

Tom Dwan - Relatively unknown to those who haven't followed the poker scene recently. He built his bankroll and reputation playing millions of hands online. He has transitioned to the live scene and, much like Ivey, is unafraid to to play the highest stakes and wager millions of dollars. He's yet to breakthrough on the tournament scene, but has only played at two WSOPs.

Patrik Antonius - High stakes player who has also won millions online. He hasn't played an extensive number of WSOP Events, rather focusing his efforts on the side cash games running during the busy WSOP season, but is regularly regarded by his peers as one of the best.

I think my #4 is a lock although some beg to differ:

John Juanda - Possibly the most underrated player of the bunch, he often falls under the radar due to his low-key personality. He has had a great deal of tournament success as well as success in the cash game arena. He has four WSOP Bracelets as well as wins in Australia and on the Professional Poker Tour (PPT).

The fifth spot is the most interesting in my opinion. I'll spew a few names that I think are worth consideration or debate:

Phil Galfond - One of the biggest cash game winners of probably all-time with a WSOP bracelet as well. Tough to argue with this.

Daniel Negreanu - Admittedly hasn't played his best poker in the last couple years but he has leaned on the HSNL community to really improve his game and expand upon his poker knowledge. He's shown tremendous improvements and is becoming more acclimated with online high stakes play.

David Oppenheim - Limit specialist and plays the biggest games.

Isildur1 - A niche nomination that is fueled by the online poker railbirds. In love with his degeneracy, talent, and fearlessness, he is certainly worth mentioning. He went on an upswing last year that was unbelievable and soon followed it with a historic plummet to poker infamy.

Brian Hastings - Can't exclude the Stingman, the guy who had the single biggest winning night in online poker history. He's relatively unknown in the live scene due to his age but all ready made a splash with an upcoming Poker After Dark appearance. He is also playing the bigger 10-game mixed online now, illustrating a clear prowess for various poker disciplines.

Jamie Gold - Cash doesn't lie and he is one of the all-time winningest tournament players in poker. He knows how to manipulate a big stack and no one else is capable of crushing his top-top (jokes).

Anyways, I'd be curious to hear if there were any glaring omissions on this list that you guys feel worth mentioning.

Oh yeah -- halfway through the month and here are our prop bet standings:

http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/3593/prop1219.jpg

I bought up some percentages of people yesterday and was fortunate enough to have them cash for a combined amount of over $45,000. Pretty exciting to sit on my ass and watch the Bears and Bengals get trounced and still make a little extra money! Anyways, I've been spending more and more of my time looking and doing research on finding good investees in the 2p2 Marketplace and I have been fortunate to have some decent results. There were some other close calls yesterday that could have made the day epic, but I can't complain with the results.

The CR party was a blast. Good to meet a few new people and see some other familiar faces. I ended up leaving a little early and lost a heads-up battle in a $24 On-Demand RUSH when my QQ lost to A3 on a 234 flop -- that damn 3 on the river. Anyways, I really changed my strategy at the FT and was able to get chips and coast to a top 3 finish. Glad to see the results.

Prop Bet wise, I'm crushing. Results are below and I'm very pleased with how things are going. I haven't done well on FTP aside from a few deep RUSH on-demands, but I'm sure that's just variance. This is really my last week for the bet since my girlfriend is flying into Chicago all next week and then the holidays will kick in. I'm 0-3 in mFTOPS events and am unsure what else I'll play. Maybe a few turbos here and there but nothing that is going to consume 8-14 hours of my day.



Good luck at the tables guys. I'll post a more thorough blog next time.

Well if there is one word used to describe my ability to play at Final Tables, it is certainly not Tiger Woods. I'm more like the Phil Mickelson of the poker world. I give myself tons of opportunities and I'm just unable to shut the door and close it out.

I final tabled another big event yesterday, the $16.50 Turbo on Stars. First paid a handsome $7,000 and I ended up busting out in eighth for a little shy of $700+. Good for the PLBs and prop bet but definitely disappointing. To add salt to the wounds, not getting a four-figure cash is a little irritating as well.

Tyler had some good cashes two nights ago and neither of us have had an eventful mFTOPs (I've lasted a combined 45 minutes in Event 1 & 3), so as it stands, here are our rankings. I've got a healthy lead both monetarily and in points:

After venting a little from my bustout I ended up playing some PLO. I've been working pretty hard on my game and moved up to $1/$2, where they respect my raises (lol). Anyways, I've found the games to be pretty good and the smaller player pool to be easier to identify the regs/etc. I was fortunate enough to have some very weak players to my immediate right at three of my tables, playing hyper loose-passive and trying to give away their monies. I quickly got stuck quite a bit - just shy of 10 buy-ins, but I put forth a valiant effort and chiseled back to a little under a 1.5 Buy In loss.

In the process I accumulated some pretty amazing stacks (keep in mind that I start with $80 on each table and these are shallow).

Here is a graphical depiction of the roller coaster:

Anyways, tonight is our annual CR Christmas party that is hosted by Taylor and Andrew. I'm looking forward to it as there are some instructors flying in, etc and it's always nice to meet some members etc. They are anticipating a potential Snowmegeddon so it maybe another weekend of hibernation and grinding. My ultimate goal is to have all Top 20 scores of > $100 and on Top 20 points with single digit PLBs.

I'm pretty proud of my MTT accomplishments thus far, nine days in with decent volume (a few days off) and about $3,000 in winnings/$2,000 profit. It's pretty funny because a bust out in an MTT feels 100x worse than a loss of an All-In pot. The positive of that is that I am very critical of my play and always trying to think of improving upon myself etc.

I have been thinking a lot about my approach to late-game and I'm going to adjust it to a little more aggressive. I think I find myself not taking advantage of "ladder climbers" and stealing their chips and I become a bit too passive and nitty. No one cares about 12th, only first right?

I'm just going to regurgitate some thoughts rather than make a fluid blog entry.

Breaking News, Isildur1 signs with PokerStars. The railtards at 2p2 have been going crazy over this news and countless people are talking about how PS's games are going to suddenly skyrocket into epic Rail Heaven matches with six-figure pots and insane heads-up challenges and duels. Personally I think this news is pretty amusing. While it is sure to drive traffic to their site, the fact that PS hasn't released the identity of Isildur1 is ridiculous. There is no reason that he should be the exception to everyone and be a faceless name yet a huge marketing asset to Stars. There is speculation that they may release the identity before PCA in January, but I'm not really sure anyone will care barring that it's secretly Dan Harrington, Kenny Tran, or someone totally unexpected.

My attitude about the upcoming poker legislation is pretty pessimistic. It will surely mean some changes in the lives of hundreds of thousands of poker enthusiasts, hobbyists, and pros, and even more significant changes for those whose lives are a little more directly attached to the livelihood of the poker industry, myself included. I'm a paranoid person at heart and I really have no clue what to expect or anticipate when this bill gets passed. I'll share more about my attitude on this once the details are finalized and speculation decreases. Right now it's all hearsay and it's difficult to forecast anything. With that said, I had a very fun and insightful interview/discussion with NxtWrldChamp, nutedawg, MDoranD, and Damn Ringer. It's posted on the homepage here: http://www.cardrunners.com/article/144/around-the-table-poker-legislation/

Today marks the beginning of the mFTOPS on Full Tilt. With my prop bet going strong, these events will play a critical role in the outcome. The large prizepools will mean some major PLBs are at stake. I should have the advantage though, because Tyler doesn't play many mixed games whereas I've played a good share of every format in the mFTOPS. He has the advantage that I'm at CR during the day and unlikely to play many, if any, of the 1:00 start events. Either way it'll be a fun sweat and I bought 25% of his action a few months ago, so he's more than welcome to ship a jersey! Thus far of my 14 cashes I have four final tables. Tyler has none. Our points race is probably within 10 points of one another (I FT'ed another event yesterday but didn't get the point total). Very fun and exciting and an added motivator to grind and make clear + EV decisions.

I'm also plugging along with improving my PLO game and am making tremendous strides in my hand reading, willingness to play aggressive, and opening up my preflop game. I've watched several hours of videos and have really done some objective and hyper-critical review of my play. Unfortunately they aren't all panning out the way I ideally would like:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5846024

Stars also has these $2/$4 PLO 20bb CAP tables that are just hilarious. 20 bbs is absolutely nothing in a pot-sized game where equities run so close, so every hand is essentially all-in with Stars raking $2/hand. Great for accumulating FPPs/VPPs but the swings are astronomical.

Speaking of VPPs, I hit my VPP Milestone for the year. I am around 110k VPPs now and the decision needs to be made on whether I want to pursue 200k VPPs ($3400 instant bonus) or to just stay content. The competitor in me wants to really challenge that 200k mark, however I know I'll be so dejected and crushed if I reach something like 175k and then lose time or opportunities to finish the last leg (thus giving up $3400 in free money). I'll likely just focus on MTTs and try to put my grind hat on, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't seriously thinking about it.

You guys will notice that this week we started a small alteration in the video schedule.

We are going to be releasing our MTT content on Wednesday afternoons and SNG content on Thursday afternoon. We moved the previously scheduled LHE content from Wed afternoon to Saturdays and the Mixed games from Thursday afternoons to Sunday.

This isn't a permanent fixture but I think it's a good change for a multitude of reasons. I'll closely monitor the feedback, but I wanted you guys to let me know what you think on if you like/dislike this change and reasons for or against.

Thus far in the month of December, I have played more MTTs in these last five days than I probably have in the entire year. While there are drastic emotional and intangible elements that I have dealt with grinding MTTs that I had never encountered before as a primarily Cash/SNG player, I wanted to focus on one specific one.

Do a quick browse of a tournament forum. The most common and overused term, in my opinion, is the concept of 'standard'. I've had this discussion with Tyler, the guy I'm prop betting against for December, and we've had some pretty in-depth discussions about so-called "standard" spots. I'm making a very concerted effort to avoid eliminations as "standards" aside from the normal cooler.

Standard spots typically start with a specific stack size, i.e. Hero having 12 big blinds and open-shoving from MP+1 and getting sniped off by small blind who wakes up with AK. Or a spot where Hero has 18 big blinds and reshoves QJs to a cutoff open and cutoff has TT.

While certain situations and spots are certainly 'standard' or completely not-dictated by the intellect or savvy of the player's involved (see: KK vs AA all-in preflop), I think this umbrella of "standard" is drastically overused and really can deter players from improving and criticizing their game. They chalk up an elimination to something that is standard and move forward with registering for a new MTT and ignore analyzing the hand any further.

I may choose a specific hand or something from my future sessions that illustrate this idea, but to anyone reading, just be your #1 and hardest critic. You can never be too harsh on yourself -- especially if you are looking to improve and please avoid concluding that your hand was just 'standard'. Consider the alternatives and think outside of the box.

I have some other things I want to write about but I don't have time at the moment.

Update on the status of the bet. Missing Tyler's double deuce score ~$120 + 18ish points so it's actually closer than this.

Tyler: 151.9 PLBs, $527.08 Cashes
Alex: 174.9 PLBs, $1,657.09 Cashes

Rough tally after four days.

fimbot: 52.81 PLBs, 6 cashes, $167.13 winnings
nomo4life: 124.5 PLBs, 7 cashes, $1,250.19 winnings

mFTOPS starts Wednesday and will likely create some great swings and sweats.

My opponent cashed in two tourneys yesterday while I played none. Definitely closing the gap.

Made the FT of the 5r, and then this :(

Points as of this morning:
fimbot: 37.35pts
nomo4life: 69.23pts

Difference: nomo4life +31.88 pts

I only played three tournaments yesterday. A 135 man $10 RUSH that I min-cashed and a super-turbo that I started off on a major heater and then fizzled out for like 30th out of 600+ entrants. Last event was the nightly RUSH SuperTurbo and busted first hand 44 < AA < KK < QQ oops.

In other news, I was very pleased to see Lebron step it up and have a great game last night versus the Cavs. Sports fans are seriously the most annoying people in the world, and yes, I'm including fans of teams that I follow as well. In my humble opinion, Lebron owes Cleveland nothing. He put that team and program on the map and, quite frankly, the organization didn't do a very good job of fielding a competitive team. Sure they had a great regular season record, but their inexperience was glaringly exposed come playoff time. Lebron did what was best for himself, just the same as any other person would do. While his medium of delivering the news may have been ill-advised, people who still hold on to this grudge are pretty pathetic (see Brian Kelly and University of Cincinnati fans for another example).

This is also the final week of Fantasy Football before the post season. I've admirably held my own and leveraged my early waiver priority to make some great acquisitions and have a sniffing-chance of making the playoffs. I had a horrible draft (mistakenly over-valuing having a deep QB bench versus position players) and ended up suffering with a lackluster RB stable of CJ Spiller, Thomas Jones, and some other player. Fortunately I started getting the hang of things mid-season and following injury reports/etc. I picked up Jacob Tamme as soon as Dallas Clark was placed on IR and it's been my best pick-up of the year. He regularly outscores my opponent's TE and when he scores, it's a bonus since I have Peyton Manning as well.

Enough sports talk. Hoping to grind some this weekend and rack up a few decent scores.

Good Luck,