The Poker Player of the Year in 2005?

Several different prominent members of the media and poker community compile Player of the Year rankings, usually based on the players' tournament performances during a particular calendar year. ESPN does in association with Bluff magazine, as do Card Player and TopPair magazines, and the International Poker Federation, or IPF.

Even Phil Hellmuth computes his Poker Champion of the Year rankings that appear in ALL IN magazine, but more on that later. Poker Player is wise enough not to get involved, as doing so can be the basis for some controversy, as you will see below.

It's important first to differentiate between rankings and polls. For the most part, rankings are based on some sort of predetermined criteria usually associated with a points system that rewards players depending on how they finish in major tournaments. On the other hand, polls are generally opinion-oriented, and not necessarily based on fact. Think Gallup and Harris, for example, and you'll get my drift.

I thought it might be interesting to see how the final 2005 Player of the Year rankings compared when laid out side-by-side. Those players highlighted in red appear in the Top 20 of all five of the rankings compiled; those in yelloyellow show up in four; those in green make it into three; those in blue qualify in two, and those not highlighted only appear in one.

As you can see, only two players, Phil Ivey and Allen Cunningham, finished in the Top 20 in all five of the player rankings. Both had outstanding years, and certainly are deserving of being acknowledged for their exceptional achievements by all those evaluating their play.

Five players finished in the Top 20 in four of the five player rankings, including Chris Ferguson, Men Nguyen, Scotty Nguyen, Michael Gracz, and Michael Mizrachi. Consistently in the money in major tournaments, it comes as no surprise that these fine players would find themselves ranked by most as among the world's best in 2005.

Seven more players amassed enough points to finish in the Top 20 in three of the player rankings. They were Gavin Smith, Tony Ma, Ted Forrest, Erick Lindgren, John Gale, Antonio Esfandiari, and 2005 WSOP World Champion Joseph Hachem. While certainly no one could touch Hachem's earnings in 2005, all of these outstanding pros accrued the points necessary by three different compilers to attain this high level of recognition. Those who finished in the Top 20 in two of the player rankings include John Phan, John Juanda, Eric Seidel, Ming Ly, Vinnie Vinh, Nick Schulman, Freddy Deeb, Doug Lee, and Steve Dannenmann. The other 31 players who are listed on the above chart were recognized as being a 2005 Top 20 player by only one ranking body.

Surprisingly, only Chris Ferguson was ranked #1 more than once, and then only twice. So obviously, discrepancies exist among those involved in determining the overall Player of the Year. For kicks, I dug a little deeper to reveal some of the more interesting ones.

Let's start with John Juanda, who was rated #1 in Bluff magazine's power rankings at year-end and #17 by Phil Hellmuth. Juanda finishes number #22 according to TopPair, but you have to go all the way to #122 to find him in Card Player's rankings, and you won't find his name at all among the 100 players that the IPF ranks.

While not attempting to be critical, I found Bluff's rankings somewhat confusing, because they are based on the results of a trailing 24-month period rather than everyone else's who are based on the calendar year. As evidence of this, the results reported here are as of 1/24/2006, and are updated about every two weeks. Their previous rankings from two weeks earlier, which one would assume should have been year-end results, had Juanda #1 and Ivey #2, the same way they are listed here.

Yet on January 17th, Bluff announced that Ivey was their Player of the Year! The press release states, "The Bluff Player of the Year is awarded to the player that accumulates the most points in the Bluff/ESPN Poker Power Rankings." So even though Juanda had 100+ more points than Ivey under their power ranking system at year's end, the honor was given to Ivey instead. One can only interpret this to mean that Ivey must have accumulated more points in 2005 than Juanda did, while over the trailing 24-month period Juanda had more, but the reader has no way of really knowing for sure.

Another interesting example is John Phan, who led Card Player's leader board for much of the year, only to finish second to Men Nguyen. While his sixth place ranking by the IPF is somewhat consistent with Card Player, Phil Hellmuth has him tied for 37th, TopPair has him #38, and he comes in a rather distant 61st according to Bluff.

Raja Kattamuri, ranked #2 by the IPF, lands 133 places down TopPair's list, is 140 places down on Phil Hellmuth's, finds himself #357 in Card Player's rankings, and is not ranked at all among the 250 players that Bluff ranks.

Perhaps the most interesting of all was that of Phil Hellmuth himself. Now I really like Phil's criteria for determining rankings, as it is simple and straightforward. According to his website, only WSOP and WPT events are considered, with different multipliers used to establish points depending on the significance of the event and the amount of the buy-in, the minimum being $5,000.

But then I noticed that Phil ranked himself #7 in his own poll, while not appearing in the Top 20 of any of the others, so I thought it might be interesting to explore this in more detail.

Here's how the poker icon ranks according to the others:

TopPair: #52
IPF: unranked out of 100
Bluff/ESPN: unranked
out of 250
Card Player: #683 Hmmm. What gives? So I delved a little deeper. It appears that Phil gave himself 400 points for winning the 2005 National Heads-Up Championship and its first prize of $500,000, although it is not a WSOP or WPT event. Now I'm not trying to minimize the significance of Hellmuth winning this prestigious title; it just seems that awarding himself points for it is not consistent with the criteria that is posted on his website.

In fairness, it looks as if Phil gave the other top ten finishers in this event points in his rankings also. But there's more.
In the 2005 Tournament of Champions, Phil finished 3rd, collecting $250,000. Now this is a WSOP event, but it is a freeroll, which seemingly violates Hellmuth's $5,000 minimum buy-in requirement.

In fact, Phil did not even qualify to play in this event; he was one of three players invited by Harrah's to participate, a move on Harrah's part that spawned quite a bit of controversy. According to his points system, it would once more appear that Phil gave himself 240 points for his 3rd place finish, which is what he accords players for that particular finish in a $10,000 buy-in event.
Again, in fairness, Hellmuth also gave the other top ten finishers points under his system for their respective finishes in the TOC.

Phil's only other qualifying finish under his own parameters in 2005 was an 8th place finish in a $5000 buy-in WSOP Pot Limit Omaha event, worth 75 points according to his ranking system. Adding the three events together, one arrives at 715 points, the amount he has posted to determine his 7th place ranking. But by adhering strictly to the qualifiers that are listed on his website, Phil seemingly finished with only 75 points rather than the 715 points he claims.

If Hellmuth is going to include the results of these events or ones similar in his Poker Champion of the Year standings, perhaps he might want to clarify this on his website to avoid conjecture in the future. The ambiguity of his rankings makes one question their validity. One could even make an argument that Mr. Hellmuth, particularly in light of where he finished in the other rankings, might be engaged in yet another form of self-promotion by deceptively manipulating his own rankings for his personal benefit. Readers can draw their own conclusions. I've already arrived at mine.

ALL IN magazine also conducted a poll by asking 15 top professional players who they believed was the Player of the Year. I want to emphasize that this was a poll, based on opinion, rather than a simple or complicated method of determining a player's ranking based on performance as the others listed above. The results are listed below:

#1 Phil Ivey
#2 Chris Ferguson
#3 John Phan
#4 Allen Cunningham
#5 Mike Matusow
#6 Ted Forrest
#7 Michael Gracz
#8 John Juanda
#9 Tuan Le
#10 Minh Ly

While Phil Ivey admitted to ALL IN that he was too lazy to participate in this poll, he nonetheless emerged as the landslide winner amongst his peers. These results, with the exception of Mike Matusow, who despite having a terrific year did not finish in the Top 20 in anyone else's rankings, are extremely consistent with most of the others and in fact lend some measure of credibility to them all.

So who really was the rightful Player of the Year in 2005? Unfortunately, until a unified ranking system is put into place that everyone agrees to abide by, the reader will have to draw his or her own conclusions.