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Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 1886
How many times does a poker player need to beat another player to prove once and for all he or she is the better player? Since the losing player can always argue that the other got lucky, how can they settle the score in a way that the losing player will have to admit the other is better? Is it possible to rank poker players in world order the same as they are ranked in other sports?
Joined: Mar '12
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 1277
Tournament rankings are absed on results obviously - so generally if someone cashes tourney after tourney they are a good player, they are consistently getting results.
Cash play I'd have to rank on money made obviously but also factor in difficulty of opponents. If you beat Ivey, Hellmuth, Antonius, Gus, Dwan, Trickett and Esfandiari repeatedly, then you can say you are better than them
So both ways it's a question of results.
A better way to settle it between two players is heads up. I think 5 heads up matches is too few, to counter variance you need around 13+ imo.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Its a field where its hard to determine that. There are always be "excuses" from both parties involved, so this can be a never ending story. I think it will end when both admit to it.
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
Good question as to who's better that does come down to the way the cards fall at times. Then again, I've seen players (in the short time I've played) that call crazy and don't show any type of methodology to the way they play. So I don't know how those type of players aver improve witout drastic changes. If two players of the same caliber are trying to define who's better thenmaybe they need to have a monthly competition between themselves say best out of 5 or 7 games. Pro players are measured by wins / money so I guess that's how it's done.
Joined: Nov '11
Location: Poland
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 1088
I choose last option - they can't... We see a lot of new poker players who earn a lot of cash and beat famous poker pros... So who is the best - pro player with xx WSOP bracelets and titles? Or young man, who win ONCE and got tons of cash?
Joined: Feb '11
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 5712
Maybe they should do it in the good old fashioned way and have a duel to the death, last man standing etc. That would solve it once and for all.....and get rid of another player to make more room for us BRM'ers!!!!! LOL
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 58 (M)
Posts: 2432
In poker you have good players ,bad players and pro-players.You can not say this one is the best because he won a world championship .So many types of poker,so many good players,can not say like in other sports this is the fastest,strogest,smartest,etc.Best of 5 means one of them is better in heads up,maybe is not good in tourneys,or cash.What comes arround goes arround.
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
If you are talking about heads up games i really think that after 10k hands you can declare a winner, but 10k hands played in multiple sessions, not once!
If we talk about live tournaments then i think that the amount of money won so far it's a good score
Joined: Aug '10
Location: Germany
Age: 52 (M)
Posts: 2219
The ROI is a good indicator lomgterm to say who is the better poker player. I think it needs more than x-thousand games to know that. OK to see who is a donk needs sometimes one move in a tourney
Joined: Mar '12
Location: Netherlands
Age: 51 (M)
Posts: 617
depends if we talk about cashgames or tournaments...
the player who masters both is the better player...cashgames online is not my thing i conlcuded
but when i play live cashgames i'm always winning,the sad thing is i have difficulties stopping at the right time,,mostly cause i don't want to stop after winning a couple of 100 euro's.
something i have to work on...
A mistake i have made more then once: what would the other players think of me if i stand up with the profit i made and leave the building now?
then i play on and get a to see some of the worst bad beats...(winner at the flop andturn but lose on the river),something that will ocure 100% if you keep on playing...
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
if you win over anyone at that moment you are better than him- that's it, second time he might be better than you- if you win a series of any amount of games, lets say 4322 than this only means that u were better than him in this series- but not better player forever...all players are good players if they show profit at the end of the day/week/month/year...
At least not on online poker. There are just too many idiots who know nothing about poker sucking out time after time for it to give a truly accurate measure of a player ability.
Joined: Oct '11
Location: Sweden
Age: 32 (M)
Posts: 1410
Well, I think that it's really hard to determine who actually is the better poker player. The main reason is that there are just so many variations of poker out there. But lets just say for the sake of it that you want to determine who is the better Hold'em player. Then I think the only real way to determine this is by playing Cash with 9/6/2 seats 5 times on each, 5 HU games with chips, 5 Tournaments where both join, every number of seats Sit&Go's 5 times each and then top it all off by playing in 5 main events of WSOP/WPT.
And even if this was done, I don't think that you could say who is the best. I think that you simply can't find out who's the best. Only thing you can do is determine that the good players are doing some profit.
It's hard to say who is the overall better player. I would go by cash wins at the tables, Cashes in tourney and heads up performance. If 2 where to play it out in heads up I would say 5 games is to few maybe playing so many hands and at the end whoever is up would win.