>All the actual best players play for millions and have a reputation to uphold.

All these players are high stakes players. I think you're underestimating the fun factor. As for reputation. For a poker player having a reputation as being beatable is a profitable thing to have.

>but they aren't the best of the best.

Who do you think is? Like how many people do you think rank above this group at HUNL?

Anybody here? http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/rankings/

Or any of these people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_...

I like your posts, but you're misinformed on this topic. The pros selected are among the best HUNL players in the world right now. Offering the top winners in a separate variant not only misinterprets how different the games are but also falsely equivocates being the best with making the most money.

If someone asked you who the best mobile app developers were in the world, your list should comprise solely of mobile app developers.

You make a fair point. I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. I edited my original post to reflect that.

No worries, thanks for taking the time to listen. Have a great day

HUNL is a different game to MTT which makes up almost all of the ranking values for hendonmob and the WSOP ME winners specialities.

Tournament earnings are utterly unimportant in the world of Heads Up No Limit cash game poker.

All of those people would get absolutely crushed at heads up no limit by any of the four players.

Jamie Gold won the WSOP, but he's a pretty bad player.

I agree, these probably aren't the best.

Same as in programming. There are some great programmers that we all know and that are public figures. But the absolute best? Probably making high 7 figures working in a dark room somewhere.

When it comes to HUNL specialists the best have to be public because there isn't as much action offline as in full ring and MTTs.

They aren't the best since I think that probably is safely in Polks hands but they are near the best.

my understanding is these are some of the best HU players the world has seen. WSOP is a completely different story being a super-large MTT.

They are at worst top 15 HUNL players in the world.

How was this determined? Online play?

Yes from online play but there aren't any official rankings. It's hard to determine exact rankings because it's rare for 2 world class players to face off over a large enough number of hands to give a significant sample but a loose hierarchy does exist. You can tell where a player sits in that hierarchy by who he is willing or unwilling to play. It's not an exact science but I agree that all of these players are unquestionably elite and the AI has beaten them to an extent that it would be a very strong favourite over a team compromising of the true top 4 players.