Top 5 most prestigious live NLHE tournaments to win (excluding Main Event)?
Excluding the Main Event, what are the top 5 live NLHE tournaments that are the most prestigious to win?
Calling an event prestigious is kind of this idea of carrying over concepts from sports in poker. Which has been fantastic for marketing poker but actually makes no sense given the nature of the game. In a tennis or golf tournament, the best players are going to be in the final 4 the vast majority of the time, while we get a completely different set of 9 players every year at the ME final table (with a handful of exceptions) because it's a massive amount of random luck to get there.
In something like tennis or golf, if you pick the top 5 players of all time, they almost certainly won some of the most prestigious events. But in poker someone like Phil Ivey has never won the main event or even a bracelet in hold'em but nobody holds that against him because winning a prestigious event is not a good measure of a player as much as in a sport.
If you actually understand poker, then no single event is prestigious as much as sustained results over many years.
The WSOP $50k PPC is the closest to an exception just due to the 9-game nature and ridiculously tough field giving it a little more prestige boost than average.
With all that said, if you're force to come up with an example, it's basically tied to buyin size and prize pool size, so the 1 million buyin WPT one drop would probably be in the list, as well as the WSOP biggest buyin which in recent years is the $250k super high roller, and then some Triton Poker events and Super High Roller bowl.
Then there's a bunch of large-field 10ks which get a lot of attention because of big prize pools and media coverage, such as the WSOP Europe, EPT, LAPC, WPT 5 diamond classic, Wynn Summer Championship, and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.
Triton main and SHRB main I guess. Everything else is kinda nosense
Yea, this is not track or golf where the best performer is going to win. Usually the winner will be someone who played very well, but also got very lucky.
Forget prestige.
You want to win the tournament with the biggest prize pool. Many high roller events have big $$$ up top.
In the $10k space, the December Wynn WPT Championship has become insanely huge. It's like a winter WSOP Main.
I'd argue that something like the Monster Stack or Milly Maker is an amazing one to win since you can turn $1.5k into $1 million.
Even the $400 Colossus offers the chance to hit an amazing multiplier.
A final table run in an event like that can be the launching pad to bigger things.
Days of prestige in poker are over. People play for money now or enjoyment. Whatever has the biggest prize pool is the next best to win…. Most don’t play 100ks so like five diamond, Seminole hard rock main, lapc, pca and Aussie millions (if it ever comes back) are probably the biggest prize pools outside wsop for normalish stakes.
People don’t even remember the main event champions anymore. I have to google like half the last 10 year winners and I follow poker pretty closely… no one really cares about poker accomplishments anymore except very big names.
I like the way you're thinking, OP, but your question ultimately forces everyone to hone in on the word "prestige." smoothcriminal says is perfectly right above this post. So for me, I had to think about your question in another way: which tourneys I would want to win if I ever was in a position where the money itself doesn't matter?
I can't really get to five. The only event that has cachet rather irrelevant to its prize pool is the $50K PPC, as already noted above. It has most of the top players, involves multiple variants, and has a structure that leans more to one side on the skill-luck spectrum than any other. (Yes, I know, luck will always matter in a tourney, but it matters less in some events than others.)
Back in the day, events like the PCA or WPT Championship or. couple of the EPT stops might have been in the convo. Those always struck me as being all-star fests.
Could the rest of the WSOP NLH tournaments in Vegas be up there? You know, miniature MEs...
Wynn WPT Championship
PCA Players Championship
EPT Main
Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open
Just put the word into the google machine guys it's 2024 it's not that hard
Triton events, aside from the 50k ppc are the most prestigious in my opinion.
The top crushers in the world battling it out.
I agree with Main, PPC, and Triton.
That being said, it would be cool if someone did something every four years like the Olympics or World Cup.
I think part of the problem is there are just too many bracelet events/ “championships”/ whatever they want to call it. We’re at nearly 100 bracelets now every WSOP. Not to mention all the other series’.
Make it more rare and uncommon and the prestige will follow.
Through a combination of the decline of poker on TV, and the tournament scene being diluted, almost nothing has any special prestige anymore.
PPC has it, yes.
I wouldn't even say Triton. We internet nerds follow it, sure. I've never heard anyone at a poker table talk about Triton.
Back in the boom years, winning the WPT Championship was definitely a big deal. The NBC Heads-Up, absolutely. The WSOP Tournament of Champions. The USPC. The Five Diamond. Looking more worldwide, the EPT Championship had some juice.
PPC has a mixed-game format and shouldn't count. OP specified no-limit hold'em.
Is winning the Super High Roller Bowl or $200k Triton Invitational more prestigious than a large field $10k? If the ME is tops then I don't know how a sub 100 entry field can compare.
never heard of the super high roller bowl so that's out. the top 5 are probably various wsop events but if something else would make the cut it is from wpt or triton
They should run a tournament series where they invent a new poker variant for each tournament and don’t tell players the rules until the night before.
That way, you are testing players’ abilities to intuit core poker concepts at a deeper level rather than their ability to memorize strategies for one particular variant.
They should run a tournament series where they invent a new poker variant for each tournament and don’t tell players the rules until the night before.
That way, you are testing players’ abilities to intuit core poker concepts at a deeper level rather than their ability to memorize strategies for one particular variant.
Shaun Deeb would crush something like this.
This year's Colossus had almost twice the entries that the ME had. Which one is more prestigious, again?
Wynn WPT is way more prestigious and you actually have to beat good players almost all of the time. You generally won't get a "soft" (main like) table. The Main is a landmine fest and everyone is petrified to do anything out of fear of busting and getting a soft table can be worth thousands.
Wynn WPT Championship is the clear 2nd most prestigious
They should run a tournament series where they invent a new poker variant for each tournament and don’t tell players the rules until the night before.
That way, you are testing players’ abilities to intuit core poker concepts at a deeper level rather than their ability to memorize strategies for one particular variant.
Oh yeah, poker would be amazing if we had these tournaments where play is as godawful as a result of a game that has just been invented and no one could possibly develop any sophisticated strategy.
