Why the WSOP main event winner is not necessarily "great'

[UATrewqaz]

Saw a thread (Barry Greenstien's interview/article thing) about how big tourney winners are not really the best players and I couldn't agree more.

Greg Raymer, by all accounts a very good if not great player, cannot be considered in the same breath as the players mentioned in Greenstien's article for this simple reason.

hand went something like this (from memory)

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
Mike "the mouth" T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

Flop
4 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Raymer all in on semi-bluff
Mike calls (has Raymer covered).

Raymer 52%
Mike 47% (according to ESPN).

Turn 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] giving Raymer nut flush and huge pot and eliminating one of players who was gunning for him at that table.

He loses this 50/50 and he goes home and nobody here even knows who he is, a single pot make or break. With the high degree of variance in poker a single pot cannot make someone great.

As Barry pointed out in a cash game where you don't bust out a single big pot coin flip win is relatively meaningless.

And several hands later John Murphy joins the table as chip lead (Raymer a close 2nd).

Raymer A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
Murphy J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

Murphy makes a bet, Raymer goes all in, Murphy asks "How much do you have?" very eagerly but upon realizing it's probably close to all his chips he throws away his slightly better hand. Murphy has guts this one hand and Raymer might go home.

I should also add that I do not think Raymer's play is bad in either of these hands, in fact they are both very good plays imho.