Generalist or Specialist

*Rereading these past two posts I have to apologize for them. Not my best writing. But seeing as how I have nothing better to post right now, I am putting them up anyways.*

Recently, J posed the question: Who is the better poker player: one who specializes in one game such as Texas Hold’em or one who is good at mixed games?

After much pondering that led me on a journey through NFL greats, biology, and the history of poker, I have arrived at an answer that I deem satisfactory.

My first attempt to determine which was better had prestige as the main indicator of greatness. I figured that the best players would have the most hardware. Hardware consists of two categories. The first comes from tournaments won. The second are awards given by peers and people in the know. Titles and awards are terrific because they are symbols of the community’s respect and of one’s ability to hold his or her own against a sea of competitors. I found that today’s standards from prestige are based mainly on WSOP/WPT titles and reputation at the big game. This isn’t too different from yesterday’s standards.

However, the bottom line is that prestige is too vague and too varied. Phil Hellmuth isn’t widely considered the greatest poker player ever despite his record-tying 10^th WSOP bracelet. We don’t consider Gus Hansen or The Grinder to be the greatest despite their great WPT successes. Some consider Phil Ivey or Daniel Negreanu or Chip Reese to be the best but how can we consider them when others have more hardware displayed on their mantels. (Note given time any of the young players above may be able to distinguish himself as the greatest poker player.)

Discarding prestige, I started reading up on some of the great players in the history of poker. One article that caught my eye stated that Stu Unger was a talented and brilliant poker player but he shouldn’t be considered one of the greatest since he let his off-the-table behavior lead him to bankruptcy and an early death. The writer argued that he didn’t have the longevity with which we define great players. I didn’t buy this at all. Was Terrell Davis any less great because injuries cut his career short? Is Vinny Testeverde a great player because he has been in the NFL forever? The answer to both is no. I could play poker successfully for the next 50 years and never be as great as Negreanu or Ivey or The Grinder or Andy Bloch or Mike Matusow etc. if they retired immediately. Longevity is just a statistic tossed around by haters and has little to do with greatness.

Once again I had to start from a fresh angle. I turned to my biological background for help. Suppose you have a group of birds. On one half of their habitat, there are lots of fruits year around and the birds on that part specialize to feed on the fruits. On the other half are nuts and the birds there have specialized also. In the middle the birds aren’t specialized and generally don’t do as well as either specialists. I think that’s what we see today. Hold’em specialists are, in general, outperforming the mixed games generalists. However, there is a twist. If something happens to the food of the specialists such as a drought or plague, the generalists then do better because they can eat whatever food they find and specialists can only eat their certain type. So being a specialist is a great short term strategy while the generalist is a long term one.

This brought me to my satisfactory answer. The greatest poker player is the one that makes the most money. If the specialist can make more money in the short run than the generalist can in the long run, then he is the better poker player and if the generalist can make more than he is the better poker player. The goal of playing poker is to make money so the one who makes the most is the best. I think that neither William “Bill” Chen nor David “Chip” Reese are probably the best. The best is the person who is able to specialize in Hold’em while it’s a fad and then can adapt and specialize in the next fad and then the next and the next and so on. Do we have that player yet? I don’t know but I imagine we will know within the next few years as the Hold’em boom ends (a.k.a. easy money) and players are forced to grind it out once again.