Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Well now we have trimmed the fat to five candidates: Dan Harrington, Chris Ferguson, Erik Seidel , Barry Greenstein , and Scotty Nguyen. Anybody questioning Harman and McEvoy's exclusion should just match their resume up with these five (or Negreanu or Ivey's for that matter). These guys are all great No Limit Texas Holdem poker and all can play other varieties just as well. Let's go from least compelling to most. Shockingly, that forces me to start with Barry Greenstein . We aren't comparing some Sit'n go specialists so even the greats, t hough separated by the width of a hair have to be separated . He is a cash game specialist and also known as the Robin Hood of Poker. Before the entry fees became too exorbitant Greenstein donated all his tournament winnings to charity, in 2006 he changed that up to earnings (minus buy-ins). Like Chip Reese, Greenstein realized as poker went mainstream to get the recognition he deserved he'd have to play tournamen...

Going back to the Poker Hall of Fame nominations, you’ll remember they are Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Harman, Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, Tom McEvoy, Dan Harrington, Linda Johnson, and Scotty Nguyen. I’ve already made a case for those Texas Hold em poker players that I don’t think should ever be in or may be better expressed as "shouldn’t be in yet and yet is a long, long, long time" unless they do something else soon, soon, soon: Tom McEvoy and Jennifer Harman. I think Linda Johnson, despite not really being known to play poker online , should get in, probably not this year, as there are more compelling candidates which I’ll get to. Today, I’m going to look at players like Johnson who shouldn’t get in yet. On Pokerati a discussion broke out in their comments section between BJ Nemeth and owner operator Dan Michasomethingski. They kind of advanced an idea that there should be a Chip Reese threshold. The vague parameters of the Hall of Fame v...