Seiborg spoils the party. Or maybe not.

Alex Rousso, a Unibet Ambassador, gives us the latest news from the world of poker:

This week brings the news that Seiborg has done it again. For those who have not been following this story, Eric Seidel has now cashed in nine major tournaments so far this year; five of those cashes have been six-figure and a further two of them have been seven-figure.

In total, his winnings so far for this year have been $5.59M. That would put him second on the UK all time list, a few hundred thou behind the Devilfish...in five months. Since Seidel was no slouch on the all time list beforehand, he’s now way out in front – almost $1.5M ahead of Negreanu and $2M ahead of best-in-the-world Ivey.

In a previous blog I commented on how much the major sites spend to keep their poster boys on top of this “league table”. At the same time – though perhaps not coincidentally – the Hendon Mob released new all time money lists which excluded invitationals and/or buy ins over $50k.

My first thought was that Seidel is spoiling the party somewhat. I mean, we’ve expended so much energy trying to convince ourselves that Ivey and Negreanu are “it”, and then Seidel just waltzes right in there and proves that it’s all about variance after all.

Negreanu makes a good point in one of his blogs. Sites could just have ten people enter a $5M SNG and the winner takes all. That winner would have an extra $50M on their Hendon Mob and go straight to the top of the all time list. OK, so let’s have a look at the list which excludes over $50k buy in events. Ah, that’s better. Negreanu and Ivey one and two – order is restored to the universe. But hang on, we should also get rid invitationals too, since that warps the figures due to the Matthew Effect. Dammit, that still has Jamie Gold above Ivey for Christ’s sake!

It’s ridiculous that even though I bill myself as the dispenser of “red pills” about variance in poker, I feel disappointed by yet another massive bink this week from the Seiborg. The thought process in my head goes something like: “it’ll take years for the table to recover now that all these super-high rollers are skewing the results.”

What nonsense. Even the list which excludes the $50k plus buy ins suffers from the same problem. Of the top twenty in that list, nine are former WSOP ME winners (often with little else on their resume: Gold, Yang) and a further two are runners up. So even before the high rollers buggered things up, it was a charade in any case.

Negreanu’s conclusion is a typically sober one. The list 'doesn’t “mean anything”, but it’s fun and obviously creates a lot of interest'. I’d go one step further. The list does mean something: it means that there’s a hell of a lot of variance in poker, and this is just another flag being waved in front of our eyes, begging to be noticed.

We can see the real long run in action, but we have to turn to statistics of online play to do so. For a long time, I’ve used Sharkscope.com as a resource for my articles. With databases on some players stretching into the tens of thousands, one gets a better idea of the sting of variance in poker.

Only thus do we discover that it could take thousands of years to reach the long run in these live high rollers. How fortunate that our current champion is actually a cyborg.