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Categorized | NZ POKER, ONLINE POKER NEWS
New Zealand’s Top 10 Online Tournament Players.
Posted on 06 September 2010
When PokerNZ.com listed New Zealand’s top live tournament players of all time online grinders went spastic. ” I Make more than that in an afternoon” some shouted.
So we enlisted the help of Scottish Poker pro Neil Stewart ( Puggy82 ) and entrusted him with the job of compiling a list of his top 10 online players. Neil moved to the Mount in Sept 2008 and has countless large scores to his name including a 3 way chop in the Party Million for $109k, an outright win in the Ongame Champion Chip for $117k and a 5th place finish in the ipoker $2.5m for $125k. Neil also runs www.poker-allies.com with former New Zealand resident “the visionary”. Poker-Allies.com provides backing services to winning online players and has a community for these players and friends of Poker-Allies. Who better to compile a who’s who list of New Zealand’s best online grinders…
#1 Rjmgrace
Richard Grace deservedly sits at the top of the Pocketfives NZ rankings. A stalwart of both online and live play over the last few years, Gracey is a player no one wants to see to their left.
In the last year he has a plethora of 5 figure cashes including a $99k score for 4th in an FTOPs event last November. More recently he took down the Ultimate Bet $500 Sunday “mini major” for $36.6k. In total, Richard has cashed for well over $1m online, and going by his form this year, he’ll be sure to hit $2m in no time.
He had a disappointing World Series this year, but has the credentials to win live. He possesses tremendous patience and his 6′ 7′ frame is an intimidating sight. His largest live cash came on NZ soil in Christchurch where he finished 2nd in the NZ Champs in 2007 for $60k NZD.
Richard now lives in Central London with his wife and can often be spotted playing events on the UK tour.
#2 Mathclub
Those familiar with online poker over the last few years cannot fail to have noticed Shaun’s rise to the top. Only two years ago the former Volleyball Coach was grinding out a steady living play low stakes across predominantly American sites, and now he’s posting score that the best in the world would be proud of.
Not much more can be said without mentioning Mathclub’s win in the $200 two day SCOOP event on Stars in May of this year for a whopping $270k. Tremendous patience and nerve were required to outlast the huge field and defeat a tough opponent in Ryan Welch heads up.
Don’t be fooled into thinking Shaun is a one tournament wonder; in the last year alone he has muliple 5 figure scores including a 3rd place cash in Ongame’s GSOP for $61k in Feb of this year, and in the last month wins in the Ongame $100r for $18.9k and Party Hi Roller for $20.6k.
Last year he took down the ipoker $100r in back to back weeks for $12k each time, and also won the UB major for $40k.
Shaun has made a 5 part video of his PokerStars SCOOP win, which is available to see on Pokerxfactor.com.
# 3 Hammyhole (Poker-Allies.com Sponsored player)
Hammyhole is a complete newcomer to the online MTT scene, graduating from Heads Up Sit and Goes he began his MTT career in January this year. Since then he’s racked up an impressive amount of wins and posts a resume for 2010 that any established pro would be proud of.
He’s had wins in the Stars $50r for $10.25k, the ipoker $50r for $7.7k, the Party super for $6.5k and a whole host of other top 5s. But its’ on Ongame that he’s really made his mark. Hammyhole currently sits in 10th place on Officialpokerrankings.com for the year 2010, with 8 outright first place finishes to his name.
Highlights include wins in the $50r for $8.3k, the Shorthanded Turbo for $7.2k, a third place finish in the weekly major for $19.4k and a recent win in their secondary Sunday major a $100 rebuy for $15.5k.
The quick transition that Hammyhole has made to MTTs suggests that more improvement is bound to come in the rest of 2010 and beyond.
# 4 Horus7
Horus has been putting up impressive results on Pokerstars and in the last year has multiple 5 figure cashes.
In February this year he achieved a fantastic feat in not only navigating through the minefield that is the $10r to secure the win and a $14.4k payout, but also on the same day taking down a $50 freezout for $10.9k. He followed that up with a second place showing in the $100 $80k guaranteed for $18.8k in March.
More recently he has a 2nd place finish in the $50r for $9.7k to his name (July) and an outright win in the $50 $40k guaranteed good for $8.2k the week later.
Horus lives in Dunedin and is an active poster on the GP forums.
# 5 EeeTee2008
Another name familiar to any Kiwi following online poker, Elliot has played more online tournaments than any other New Zealander having played in 30000 (thirty thousand) tournaments on Stars alone. He has cashed for over $1m on Pokerstars over this period.
His largest cash came in September of last year for $36.3k when he took down a $100 rebuy with 759 entrants. He has six other 5 figure cashes on stars, two near misses in the $100r with a second and a third place and outright wins in a $100 freezeout and a $10 rebuy.
In October last year he was involved in a Tournament Leaderboard bet on Stars against MI_turtle. He pledged to donate $10k of any winnings from the bet to a charity of his choice. Unfortunately he had to withdraw part way through the challenge sighting poor health and equipment/internet, but was quick to point out that MI_turtle won the contest fair and square.
# 6 The beej (Poker-Allies.com Sponsored player)
Mike moved from the UK to NZ in September 2009. Since then he has recorded some impressive results across many different sites. His largest cash came in the FTP $750k guaranteed in March where he placed 4th for $43.8k, and in October last year he won the Cake Sunday Major for $26.9k.
Captainmurda on Ongame, he’s taken down the Shorthanded Turbo twice in the last year for $7k each time, and the European Daily twice, both times for $6.4k.
He came 2nd in the Microgaming €50r earlier this year for €15k, came 7th in the Party major for $8k and has multiple wins on the Entraction network for €4k.
Mike is a qualified Maths Teacher, but has put that career on hold for a couple of years.
# 7 Nomaddman
In September last year Damon became the envy of all Kiwi poker players when he took down the Pokerstars Sunday Million for $225k.
Since then he has continued to put up results including a win in the Poker Stars Nightly Seventy Grand for $14k and a near miss in the Titan Poker Sunday major, coming 4th for $15k.
# 8 Faecal Matter
Jordan’s largest cash also came on Pokerstars, when he took 2nd place in a $100 rebuy turbo for $30k in April of this year. He has multiple other 5 figure cashes including a win in the $100 $40k for $14.2k and a 2nd place finish in the same tournament for $11k.
# 9 poker_lord76
Jason Brown is a stalwart of the online scene, with over half a million dollars in cashes on Pokerstars. He also dabbles in sit and goes and cash.
His resume is littered with impressive finishes in tough fields, his two largest cashes coming in the weekly $1k and $200 rebuy tournaments – two of the toughest tournaments online. He won the latter for $56.5k in July 2008 and the former for $71k in April this year.
He has multiple near misses in the same tournaments, all for $20k+, clearly excelling in well structured smaller fields.
Outside of poker, Jason spends most of his time with his family.
# 10 Acesdreams
Joel also has some incredible results on Pokerstars in the last few years, most notably his runner up performance in the Sunday Million for $97.3k.
In total he has cashed for over half a million dollars on Stars, higlights include a win in a $300 freezeout for $49.4k and more recently a 3rd place finish in the $50r for $20.1k in May.
Facebook comments:
Thanks for this awesome article Neil, really gives a lot of people something to aspire to!
So there is a small sample size of results singled out for each player earning them a top 10 rank? I am assuming this ranking is not putting any emphasis on skill. (read on before you jump down my throat here)
i.e
To cash $1M from 30,000 tournies means the average cash is $33.34.
Anyone willing to grind out 30,000 tournaments should achieve that and this feat should rank in the top 10?
ROI x ITM% gives a more accurate show of wins vs losses IMO.
Averaging this out over multiple applicable rooms evens out the calc.
It is nice to see that there are some stand out results coming from NZ but lets not just look at the $$ figures as benchmarks of skill or ability as they are biased.
It means that if I play 1000 tournies lose 999 of them but hit a sunday million win on the 1000th, I am listed as a top 10? Im not saying anyone on the list fits that bill but how would we know as there is no set calc to factor it in, this list should be titled “New Zealands top 10 online poker cashes and some very good players”
Im sure that a large number of the above players would feature in the “best” category also, however it would be nice to see an actual calculation put in place, rather than people giving their “opinions” and touting them as lore.
No disrespect intended to anyone involved, I just think a non-biased non website plugging approach to this issue would help everyone get a clearer more credible picture.
I have no problem with the list, or the idea behind it. The only thing I would change is the title which is blatantly wrong and should read “NZs Top 10 Online Tournament Players”.
In my opinion at least 3 of New Zealands best ‘Online Poker Players’ are not on this list, which is fine – because they don’t play tournaments. I just feel it’s important that the audience is not being mislead and are educated about what it is they are reading, otherwise what’s the point.
Take this example:
Your in Chicago, USA. You pick up the newspaper and it reads
“NZ WARRIORS WIN RUGBY WORLD CUP”
- rugby league, rugby union.. it’s all the same.
@Richiebro, if i’m correct the list was compiled by looking at Pocket Fives Rankings – which uses a sliding points based system to determine rankings based on your results over the past 12 months – it takes into account buy-in, prize pool and player field size. Although it is biased towards those who play a lot of high buy-in tournaments, but that’s poker folks!
Thanks for that Daniel and I agree with the analogy.
I also have no problem with the players on the list, nor the idea behind it but I’m not a fan of just taking results posted at one website and relabelling those results.
There is a fundamental flaw in relying on pocket5′s for what is touted as a national ranking, you have to be a registered user of pocket5′s.
Therefore we should again change the title to, “NZ’s top 10 pocket5′s registered Online Tournament players”.
I know we’re starting to get a little crazy here, but there needs to be a benchmark to kick this off.
Whether that means everyone is informed that pocket5′s is the benchmark, so if you want to be in contention, register now, Or its most money won, or its highest ROI, or something completely different and unbiased like my calc or variation of it.
I’m obv not vying for a spot so don’t get my intentions wrong here, I just want to see a real reflection of skill in the awards not a selection of hand picked boom cashes. There are ROI’s ranging from 1% to 107% on that list, and I personally dont think 1% ROI qualifies a top 10 performance. Averaged out over the sites that player play’s that ROI runs deep into the neg’s.
I’ll change the title, that was my bad lol
BHS
Hey guys,
All valid points and I can’t disagree with any, and yes this is obviously just MTT players.
The list was compiled using pocketfives with a little bit of extra knowledge added. If you’re not on P5s and i don’t know you you didn’t get a mention, so it is obviously far from a definitive ranking list.
In addition to that the order is obviously going to be a little off. The pocketfives ranking list relies too much on volume and not enough on profit and obviously can’t take into account actual poker talent (apart from the pro poll for the top 100).
PokerLord for example is well down the list, but his achievements on Stars in the last few years are very impressive.
If nothing else it has started a debate!
So following Richie’s line of comment regarding the results coming from P5s, couldn’t we just check OPR for the results and cross check them with P5s and whoever else was put forward?
Or is Official Poker Rankings not a reliable source?
Ritchie, May be you could throw out your top 10?
OPR is not 100% perfect it’s missing cashes from my own results and my volume is nowhere near these guys so they are sure to have some missing data…. but it gives a plenty large enough sample size which is what this should be based on IMO.
The real problem is not in the integrity of the data it’s in identifying the NZ based players and their multiple online accounts.
So Pocket5′s is the only source I know of that segregates that info in a public domain. thepokerdb lists multiple accounts (from users who have linked them) and opr lists the rest.
A cross ref of:
1. identify NZ based players from P5′s
2. check that online name against thepokerdb.com to find other room accounts
3. check OPR for ITM% and ROI, avge the numbers out across multiple accounts
4. arrive at a figure
5. the list is made up of the highest 10 results.
Doing this should allow everyone to see
1. the criteria for inclusion
2. the calc used
3. unbiased results.
Then anyone who thinks they should be in the list can see why they arent and the argument stops dead in its tracks. You simply didn’t meet the criteria. If you havent linked your player names on thepokerdb…. go do it, if you havent reg with pocket5′s….go do it, if your ROI is negative….. play better more consitently, you made $1M last month but only play cash…you should be on a diff list!
I’m just stoked we’re all talking about it. OK who’d best to write and research… I’m, happy to organize. We’ll be handing out awards for a couple of online categories at the APPT party so may be this could be one?
Oh and has anyone else noticed how the math on the comment thing is hard? 16 + 8? Come on! I’m not a computer and I think that’s the whole point!
Good article Neal. Still working on the day when I get a mention
(but if I keep being booted out of the site for being a spam-bot then it may be awhile LOL).
lol, yep I noticed about the math thing too.
Dumb it down guys, we’re only poker players for gods sake!!
Use the 1 times table or something extra tricky like that.
Then make a note of all the failed attempts and their log in details, for another award later.
I think you need to get this thread out to the masses and invite them to give some (quick) feedback on the criteria……Then we can look into who will do the ground work. I’m assuming once all the criteria are agreed, calc agreed, it should be only a day or two’s solid work to get this done.
well the list is really “top online MTT players” isn’t it? theres probably some cash and maybe even SNG grinders not on the list, but as Richie has said, its very hard to get the correct stats on.
A few things richie, ROI is not prefect either, games get harder as you go up buyins, your ROI drops. Yep should definitely look at players with a huge sample size of games, as you could get players that just bink their wins and somehow make a list or think they are good. ITM, not really that relevant, the ABC poker donk probably has more ITM than the MTT pro, as pro’s either get a huge stack on the bubble, or goes broke, ABC donk just takes the min cash.
The only relevant stats, that probably the players themselves don’t even know it, and certainly is not tracked any where is..
– Hourly $ profit
– % Confidence of this hourly
The top online MTT pros, cash games player, SNG grinders, are going to have great hourly rates, derived over 1000′s of games, so they would be 99.9% confident that they can reproduce this hourly.
The guy that binks the sunday million, with the huge hourly, but has not been playing that long, is probably not going to be able to replicate this over the long term, hence fails on % confidence and is not on my list. Likewise mr $5 sng grinder $5 hourly profit can do this all day forever, but his hourly is crap so would not make my list. As per my paragraph below, I would not rate many (if any) of those live guys at making the list based on my criteria.
Good NZ online MTT players not on pocketfives? highly unlikley. If you are playing that many games (previous point in regards to sample size) you are serious about poker and hence are part of some poker community. You are gonna be on that list.
One other thing, that live list, is really “live players in NZ with the most cashes”, its got more to do with luck that skill. Stats 101. Unless they are freaks and are playing 50+ live tourneys a year, they just don’t have the sample size to prove its anything beyond variance favoring them. Its probably not even 50, would be cool to pull out an old stats book, find out the average NZ tourney feild size, then work backward off a 95% confidence interval to see what the sample size is… then politely point out how much above expectation their results are and that they have more in common with lotto than poker
so to summarise
- the only stats that matter are hourly and chance of replicating this hourly, which all the top online guys will have sick consistent hourly rates, hence I rank them highly. One hit wonders or low stakes grinders don’t. Unfortunately none of this info is known for sure, but pocketfives is the next best thing
– statistical theory proves that the results in live poker, due to the incredibly low sample sizes, has more to do with favourable variance than skill, so post the last years lotto winners next to that live poker list
You raise some good points here with regard to hourly and replication, and yes I’m sure the vast majority of NZ players are registered with pocket5′s. The point still remains that its the criteria that we are setting going forward, and this should flow through from the list to the awards. The list can be updated whenever, monthly/weekly whatever, the awards are for that player who met those same criteria better than anyone else that year. Think of the list more as a leader board perhaps?
Unfortunately hourly and replication are as you said incalculable and are therefore more irrelevant than ROI and ITM for the purpose of this exercise.
ITM is IMO more important than you’re implying as it is the bread and butter of any pro (nonsponsored of course). If a pro busts out on the bubble due to over aggressive bubble exploitation enough to affect their sample size, that is a leak in their game and shows a weakness that is correctly factored into this equation. If the pro is not making the money consitently, they wont be pro for long (MTT pro that is).
Furthermore ROI should not be drastically affected by the increased field strength as the field size decreases and the prize money increases inline with the increased buy-in. It shouldn’t be any easier to cash a $5 buyin with 4000 ‘donks’, than to cash a $100 buyin with 300 good players, if anything in my opinion it would be harder.
I think we all get that you are not a fan of the live poker list lol, but at least it has set criteria, no-one who is not on that list can say they should be on that list, it is clear about what it is and the people on that list meet the criteria of that list. It is also correctly labelled, it is not the ‘best’ it is the all time LIVE money list.
There are other things which dont add up but that is maybe another conversation? We should start a thread in the forum?
i.e sample NZ field size, when the majority of major cashes are outside of NZ fields, certainly the higher up the list you go
Very interested to get your thoughts on the criteria you see as valuable, and most importantly…….measurable that fit the bill of “best online tournament player”.
martin cardno deserves a mention somewhere, just sayin’.
K, I’m guessing that the Live vs Online wont be settled until we settle it! 5 live, 5 online players, 3 games online, 3 games live. I know this “Sample size” wont be big enough to completely settle it but it will be an interesting experiment.
Math Club picks the online guys, Robert Wang picks the live guys. We’ll do it over the APPT. I will organize the online games.
NutcrackerAA should get a mention.
yes some good points richiebro, the ITM % you are right, just cause a experienced pro would probably have a “1st or bust” mentality it does not mean the are going to be ITM any less than if they played the bubble different, but still its hard to say if they are busting out on the bubble more often then not then they are being overly aggressive, but then again this may work for them as when they do make it they are in a very good position to final table etc. Thats why I think the ultimate stats are hourly & consistency, but this is nearly always gonna be unknown – however the guys that play for a living, who are at the top of this list, wouldn’t be doing it unless they had a great hourly.
I think just live has a lot of variance, purely due to the nature of it, that there are not many tourneys, hence sample size is really low, and statistically it IS favorable variance giving these guys the results more than it is skill. That being said its the same for every live player, and there are lots of very skilled players who play live, some will have results, some not. Some of the guys on that live list are not that good at all – its just the variance, likewise there are some great players on that list who have run well. They probably have not even played 50 live tournies in their life. The online list though, you KNOW everyone of those guys are top players – their sample size being in the 1000′s, their results are statistically sound. “all time money list” though, so it is what it is.
I am pretty sure that online list is about as good as you are gonna get – it being online MTT. I thinks its pretty unlikely theres a rogue online MTT player there that no one knows about in NZ whos not on the list.
you could have a cash game list as well, as i know theres some guy in NZ who plays cash and got enough stars FPP points or whatever they are called to get a Porsche.
hey guys, just a couple of comments from me as I feel there is a bit of bad info being put out there.
1 – ITM is the most irrelevant stat in the history of poker. Many people have an ITM that is too high ie they are worried about cashing so much they never have chips when they make the money and are therefore not as likely to win the tournament. there’s some guy talked about on P5′s that has an itm of like 40% or something and is a losing player lol. with top heavy payout structures making the top 3 and going on to win is all that matters. no top player looks at or cares about ITM.
2 – the list is close enough, you are not going to get much better no matter what you do. the ideas touted are not bad, but they are still inaccurate because of a bunch of reasons. not everyone has all their names listed on P5′s, the tracking sites have flaws, P5′s doesn’t even track like 4 sites I play on, and some sites you can have multiple names (skins and name changes allowed) so it’s a lot more work than you all think. and not only that it’s a lot more work to get a result that is not going to be hugely different.
3 – richiebro your comments in your last post re ROI not changing are just wrong. ROI is based on profit, so cashing is not important, winning tourneys is. and at the higher buy ins yes you have bigger cashes but you are also spending a lot more so that eats into that profit. and lastly field size does not change roi significantly, assuming similar field strengths. ROI is the best judge or how good you are, if you get a valid sample size. and your roi will drop if you play in harder tournaments.
4 – most people way underestimate how much sample size affects results. i have built a model in my attempt to understand it better, in relation to bankroll management and some of the results are pretty sick. If your average field size is 150 ppl, and you are an 80% ROI player (which means you are sick good) and you play 100 tourneys then 90% of the time your ROI will be between -22% and 173%. You will always be a losing player 9% of the time. So we are not talking about having extremely good or bad luck, and look how different your results can be. Anyone who talks about a handful of results with regards to any poker and thinks it means anything just doesn’t get this. unfortuately media, tv commentators and even most players don’t understand how sick variance really is in regards to tourneys. knowing this, how can you even say live results mean anything? no one can play enough events to mean anything, and by the time they do the game has changed so much that you are playing totally differently anyway, lol.
hey guys just found this site
kinda agree that the P5s rankings are generally just whoever puts in a lot of volume at decent stakes rather than who is actually “best”, but it’s still a pretty good indication I suppose. I’d be interested to find out if there are any NZ players out there who put up good results and aren’t on P5s, but I’d assume most of us would have encountered them by now if they play on the main sites at least
Oh and I live in welly not dunedin, don’t know who’s giving you your info :p
I think that mathclub would overtake all other players if he put in a little more volume. Being second on the list tho and only playing once every week and a half is absurd. Good ranking imo tho.
reply to richiebro:
“3. check OPR for ITM% and ROI, avge the numbers out across multiple accounts”
A player who plays 20 games at a time and averages 10% makes more then a player who plays 5 at a time and averages 30% so it’s all relative, and when it comes to itm% the top professional who has the lower itm percentage tends to have the higher ROI.
That system of ranking doesn’t necessarily work.
Im not saying my way is right, I’m trying to set something up that can work, everyone is welcome to put their opinions in, but at least be constructive.
For every ‘not this’ try, ‘do this instead’ otherwise there’s really not much point in posting.
I haven’t seen anyone put an actual suggestion out yet.
Anyway boys and girls I’ll leave it to you to sort… or not, It’s not like the outcome actually affects me.
Live rules!! lol
First of all, it’s pretty flattering to be at the top of this list, there’s some incredible players here and it’s nice to see my name at the top!
Secondly, mostly towards richiebro, there’s obviously better ways to come up with ranking systems, but as it turns out i know shaun very well and have played against everyone on this list a lot online, and they’re all prifitable. I also believe (didn’t do any research her eat all) that me and shaun have made the most money online out of all NZ players.
Its VERY hard to come up with more than $1m in cashes and not be profitable, and I think you’d find that less than 1% of players with more than $1m in cashes are losing players. Also remember that any ranking system in this game trying to rate ANY players, let alone tournament players is going to be riddled with luck, as is the case with all of poker.
I’m gonna be stating a blog here in the next few days, and I’ll be addressing a lot of this in my blog. I don’t think that i’m the best player to have come out of the country to play online, but i have definitely had the staying power to rack up some pretty impressive results over a long time period, which is pretty important. the environment from when i first started playing online to its current state is very different (field sizes have tripled, i’ve been playing online since the sunday million was a $250k guarantee!) that no matter what you do it’s always gonna be a mess, but if people feel the need to compare apples with apples, this is probably the purest way to do so. If you compared ROI, hourly rates and profit, you’d probably find that this list wouldn’t change a lot, even though it may feel like it would.
just my $0.02, will have a blog up in a couple days talking bout this more, till then stay lucky!
Richard Grace
All very interesting points and made for great reading,im sure that we all know playing poker for a certain or select few of these top online players is very profitable. But to most who just dabble and play a few tournys a week with the deposit we can afford its just a way to play poker and try to stay on top of your game……i myself dont know any of the top 10 but i look and search for them everyday and wish them well by railing them and hope they go deep and get some big cashes! I often chat to wish them well and they do chat back so thats my buzz. I still prefer to play live as i still think when you can some of the time predict what the next cards are gunna come outa the deck……obv been short stacked dont help,but thats when i tend to lose online to a bigger chip stack,im ahead after the flop and somehow seem to lose to miracle cards on the turn and river……yes every1s had there fair share of good and bad luck. I played QT and enjoyed my experiance there and will be looking forward to APPT Auckland shortly,so ladies and gents whichever form of the game you like to play ..live or online…..it dont matter who the best is or what ROI u have good luck on the felt!
I won the 10k $1r rush on tilt last week if that counts hahah.
Time to update that list Brooke!
Paul Hockin from Hamilton just took down the Sunday Million on Party Poker for $200,000 and also cashed in the 6-max WCOOP event on PokerStars today.
Pauls been crushing small buy-in MTTs online for 2 years so he’s anything but a one hit wonder.
Look out for him at APPT Auckland
Talking to him tonight. Will sort an interview. You on skype DF?
yea, skype is daniel.j.francis I think?