The Greatest Ever Achievement in Poker

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nh

[housenuts]

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The odds of Raymer winning 2 years in a row if he were equal to his competition are something like 13 million to 1.

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when people are asking if it's a LIMIT tournament and if a straight beats a flush at the start of the tournament you sort of have to think the players aren't all equal

[Dynasty]

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what i'm wondering is if Harrah's just color xerox his last year's Wall of Champions photo for the 2005 photo, to save, like $3.99.

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The Wall of Champions is in Binion's. So, I'm guessing Harrah's won't even bother buying one.

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If you want a serious answer about this, even multiple WSOP champions only have one picture on the wall. This image was taken after Carlos Mortensen's win in 2001. But, you can see the Brunson, Chan, Moss, and Ungar only have one photo each.

[ggbman]

Anyone who thinks it wouldnt be the greatest accomplishment ever if Raymer repeated this year is on crack.

[benfranklin]

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How do people with so little patience win at poker?



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What on earth makes you assume that was posted by a winning poker player?

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...you can see [that] Brunson, Chan, Moss, and Ungar only have one photo each.

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Well that's just unAmerican.

[stinkypete]

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Hard to beat Chan's 1,1,2.

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Yeah, exactly. I don't care if they were smaller fields, it's about more than how many people you beat out. If I ran a 100,000 player tournament tomorrow, winning it would not be the greatest poker achievement ever.

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you don't understand the magnitude of this. if you're going to draw parallels, winning back to back last year and this year would be more like winning a single tournament with 14.5 million entries. (2567x5619). the difference, of course, being that winning these two tournaments instead of the one huge one would actually be a lot more difficult since the field would be far, far weaker in the huge one.

[Duke]

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Hard to beat Chan's 1,1,2.

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Yeah, exactly. I don't care if they were smaller fields, it's about more than how many people you beat out. If I ran a 100,000 player tournament tomorrow, winning it would not be the greatest poker achievement ever.

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you don't understand the magnitude of this. if you're going to draw parallels, winning back to back last year and this year would be more like winning a single tournament with 14.5 million entries. (2567x5619). the difference, of course, being that winning these two tournaments instead of the one huge one would actually be a lot more difficult since the field would be far, far weaker in the huge one.

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I don't know your results, but your thought process indicates that you haven't the slightest clue about tournament poker.

~D

[stinkypete]

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I don't know your results, but your thought process indicates that you haven't the slightest clue about tournament poker.

~D

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you are incorrect. i'd like to hear you elaborate on this though.

[fnurt]

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Hard to beat Chan's 1,1,2.

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Yeah, exactly. I don't care if they were smaller fields, it's about more than how many people you beat out. If I ran a 100,000 player tournament tomorrow, winning it would not be the greatest poker achievement ever.

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you don't understand the magnitude of this. if you're going to draw parallels, winning back to back last year and this year would be more like winning a single tournament with 14.5 million entries. (2567x5619). the difference, of course, being that winning these two tournaments instead of the one huge one would actually be a lot more difficult since the field would be far, far weaker in the huge one.

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Winning a tournament with 14.5 million entries would not be the "greatest poker achievement ever." Doing the table assignments for that tournament, however, might be the greatest.

My whole point was that "greatest" is about more than numbers. So of course someone has to come back and say I don't understand the numbers. Fine, fine, I think most of us agree that if he wins back-to-back, that's the greatest achievement ever. (If someone disagrees, make the case, it would at least liven things up.) But I don't see how anyone can seriously parse the difference - "if he finishes 3rd, that's the greatest achievement ever, but if he finishes 4th, nah, I'd only put him in second place." I'm more of a let's see how it turns out kind of person.

If you're in love with numbers, then understand, one factor in a "great" accomplishment is how likely someone would be to do it purely by chance. In other words, the odds that "someone" will win a 14.5 million player tournament are not 1 in 14.5 million. The odds that "someone will win" are 100%, which is why most people agree that "the greatest achievement ever" doesn't simply consist of winning the biggest tournament ever. You could be an awesome player or you could just be the last donk standing.

What are the odds of "someone" repeating back-to-back at the WSOP? Well, if we didn't know who last year's champion was, we'd still know someone must have won. And we'd figure that "someone" has a 1 in 5619 chance of winning this year, which are impressive odds, making it very unlikely that would occur by pure chance. But at least try to understand which numbers are relevant here.