Lots of Talk About All-Time Money List

So what exactly does this list even mean? Pretty simply, it's the total amount of money a player has cashed for in his tournament career, not factoring in buy ins. It's a shame we couldn't factor in buy ins, but obviously, that's impossible to track.

A couple sites track these stats and come up with different numbers. What you see on PokerPages.com will differ from The Hendon Mob site as well as CardPlayer. It really comes down to what events they count and don't count, which is a topic that's created a lot of recent discussion.

I think the rules for what events should, and shouldn't count should be quite simple: All scheduled open events with 20+ players, released a month in advance should count.
That means taking away all results from events like NBC Heads Up, Poker After Dark, as well as the $1 million cash Phil Ivey had in an 8 handed sit n' go in Monte Carlo that had a $125,000 buy in and was invite only.

The $250,000 buy in event that occurred at Aussie Millions recently is an interesting one. It wasn't on the schedule, and apparently was thrown together a day or so in advance. It was an open event, anyone could play, provided you were already in Melbourne. By the time the event was announced, it would have been impossible to get a flight from the U.S. in time to play in the event.

For many years at tournaments people have thrown together one table satellites, before and after a main event. Similar to a side cash game, 10 guys would each put up $1000 or so and play a sit n' go. Those events don't appear on the all-time money list and rightfully so. There have been thousands of them and they'd be impossible to track. The $250,000 event got loads of attention because of the size of the buy in, but based on the way it took place, it's identical to what would normally be called a sit n' go. The fact that the whole event took less than 12 hours is also more indicative of a turbo sit n' go rather than a standard tournament.

As many people have pointed out, the all-time list doesn't "mean anything" it's just a stat that keeps track of long term tournament success. Having said that, the list does get a decent amount of attention and I think that's good for poker. It's for that reason that I think that if sites are going to track these lists, they might as well get it right and track what makes sense. Otherwise, the lists could become even less relevant. For example, a site could hold an invite only $5 million buy in event with 10 players, winner take all. The winner of that event would be at the top of the list.

I do enjoy looking at the lists and made it a personal goal to try and get to #1. Again, it doesn't "mean anything," but it's fun and obviously creates a lot of interest. I think it would be more fun to strip away all the invite only cashes and made for TV sit n' gos and make the list a bit more pure. My number would drop for sure. I had a PAD win, a few cashes in the NBC Heads Up event, and a TOC cash that I actually had to qualify for, and did, but still don't think it should count.

If there are any computer geeks out there that want to spend the time compiling such a list, let me know! Seems like it would be a lot of work, but I don't even think you'd have to track everyone. You could probably track just the top 100 list from other sites, strip them of the invite only cashes, and see what the numbers look like then.

Might even be fun to track separate lists i.e.

"All-time list in events under $25,000"
"All-time list in events $25,000 and up"


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I'm back in Vegas now excited to be home for almost a month. I won't be traveling overseas much until the WSOP, maybe just one trip to the EPT Grand Final. The dates for that event haven't yet been released.

On the immediate schedule will be lots of online play on PokerStars. Anything from:

$400-$800 8-game
$5600 heads up turbo sit n' gos
$100-$200 NLH in Daniel's Room
$500-$1000 Limit Hold'em
$0.25-$0.50 (part of my micro challenge at about $200 now)
Sunday Tournaments

My stats in the sit n' gos have been really good so far this year, 21-9 which puts me in the top 5 I'm told. I like playing those because you get 550 vpps per sit n' go which helps with my goal of hitting 60,000 vppps in 2011. I'm already close to 20,000 and January isn't over yet.

I'm also going to be doing P90x this month, and possibly switching to Insanity in the hopes of "getting sexy." I also hope to get in some golf. Haven't picked up a club in ages. In the meantime, find me on PokerStars, I'm "KidPoker."

Daniel Negreanu is the 2004 CardPlayer Magazine and World Poker Tour Player of the Year. He presents his poker strategies in one-on-one virtual training at pokervt.com and writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column.
Read all of Daniel Negreanu's poker blog and poker articles at Full Contact Poker.