How should we view pre-2003 WSOP bracelets?

[Saddlepoint]

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Winning one today is tough because the fields are larger, but the fields are much weaker. Winning one back in the day was tough because even though the fields were small a bigger % of the field were good players. So on balance I think these factors cancel each other out.

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Exactly. They mean the same to day as they did 20 years ago.

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No and it's not close.

WSOP bracelets of the past are not completely worthless, but they are worth far less.

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You're all wrong.

The concept of any achievement in poker being "impressive" is fundamentally flawed. Poker is a game of long-term results, so any short-term achievement is almost entirely due to luck. I don't really understand where you're all coming from, and I suspect you haven't really thought it through. Dan Harrington, for example, did not do anything impressive - he was just the recipient of extraordinary positive variance. That's just as true for winning any one bracelet.

The fact that a great player has to play, on average, a greater number of tournaments to win one creates the illusion of them being more "difficult," but that's not the case.

Now, big-field tournaments might require a different set of skills than small-field tournametns, I really don't know, and someone who has experience with both might argue that the former is more difficult than the later. If so, fine. But just because it takes 50 tries to win the latter, and 500 tries to win the former, doesn't in and of itself make it "harder" or more "impressive."

I mean, seriously guys: when someone wins the lottery, are you impressed? How "hard" do you think it is to do that?

Edit: About Dan Harrington. I said he was "was just the recipient of extraordinary positive variance." That doesn't mean I don't think Dan Harrington is an incredible player, he clearly is. I'm just saying that many, many other pros, if they got his exact cards and his exact situations, would have been just as capable of equalling his achievement. What he did was 99% luck.