[MMMMMM]

So you are saying his net profit from tournaments so far this year (all prizes minus all entry fees) is about $520,000?

Now how long has he been playing major tournaments, how many major tourneys has he entered lifetime, and net profit of these events? Also how much of that net profit is due to a few mega-bucks finishes? If the variance hit a decent player with the deck on say 2 huge events, that could be enough to skew the total $ results hugely.

You really aren't addressing the issue of SD's here. You're more or less skirting it--not having sufficient hard data.

I agree it looks like there is a good bit of skill at work herem, but what appears very vague and intuitively correct is not, as you know, necessarily even close to what is actually statistically meaningful.

If you feel so inclined feel free to do a little more research, and post the data you come up with, and explain the meaning of it in statistical terms. Then we can get Mason involved in this discussion;-)

In the absence of sufficient hard data this entire discussion is so general as to be able to be summarized thus:

"It certainly looks, intuitively speaking, that Phil Hellmuth is onto something. But looks can be deceiving. And even if he is onto something (meaning he has special poker tournament skills), there is the question of just what the skill/luck ratio has actually been regarding his lifetime tournament results."

Well I think damn near everyone would agree with that assessment (except perhaps those who think Phil just plays awful;-)). But until it is somewhat more precisely quantified and analyzed, it just doesn't say very much.