The Poker Lab Rat

The WSOP has been running since 1970 (when 36 players turned up to play) so it’s probably time to ask - who has the best WSOP record of all time ?

Repeat Winners of the Main Event.
————————————–
Four players have managed to be repeat winners of the main event.

Johnny Moss - 1970, 72, 73
Doyle Brunson - 1976, 77
Stu Unger - 1980, 81, 97
Johnny Chan - 1987, 88

However, all these feats were achieved against fields of less than 200 players - so it’s an uneven playing field to consider these records in the modern game.

All time Money Winners.
—————————–
This runs into the same problem - as the top two players are simply the winners of the last two main events - as the cash prizes grow exponentially.

$12.0 million - Jamie Gold
$7.9 million — Joe Hachem
$6.1 million — Paul Wasicka
$6.0 million — Allen Cunningham
$5.5 million — Greg Raymer
$4.9 million — Phil Hellmuth
$4.2 million — TJ Cloutier
$4.2 million — Steve Dannenmann …

OK stop right there. When you start talking about Dannenmann in this list then that’s just silly !! Obviously inflation and pot sizes have skewed the results.

Most Bracelets.
————————
Now we are getting somewhere - as this list turns into a who’s who of poker.

10 bracelets - Phil Helmuth, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson
 8 wins - Johnny Moss
 7 wins - Erik Seidel, Billy Baxter
 6 wins - TJ Cloutier, Men “the Master” Nguyen, Jay Heimowitz
 5 wins - Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Ted Forrest, Layne Flack, Berry Johnson, Stu Ungar, Gary Berland.

That’s a much better list but there are still too many ties.

I think that in order to objectively determine who has the best record we could look at the following statistic which gives a better idea of who is finishing in the money …

Most Cashes in WSOP - All Time.
—————————————
57 - Phil Hellmuth ( yep - motor mouth himself is #1)
54 - Men Nguyen
51 - TJ Cloutier, Berry Johnston
45 - Chris Ferguson
43 - Erik Seidel, Humberto Brenes
42 - Brent Carter

So there we have it.

Phil Hellmuth can actually play poker when he’s not throwing tantrums for the cameras. And he is current the “best” WSOP player of all time … statistically at least.

(until Doyle Brunson or Johnny Chan beat him to bracelet #11)