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  #81  
Old 01-11-05, 06:00 PM
cognito20
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Um, Mr. Hawkins, no. He is not better than any of the people who post on this site. When I said he'd have trouble beating a $5-10 game, I completely meant it. Varkonyi for 5 days in 2002 was the luckiest poker player on the face of the Earth. His "skill", if you can call it that, was an amazing knack for avoiding hands where he could have been outplayed by a more skilled player (read: "just about anyone in the room").He made the vast majority of his chips on hands where he had the mortal nuts or improbable draws to the mortal nuts that he (in many cases improperly) drew to and hit, which is the only reason he won that tournament. As T.J. Cloutier said in his book (referring to Hal Fowler hitting about 5 or 6 inside straights head-up at the final table in 1979 against Bobby Hoff), "You could have played as good as God can play, and you couldn't have won those pots." Robert Varkonyi was hit over the head with the deck harder than perhaps any man in the history of high-stakes tournament poker in 2002, which is the only reason his simpering mug is up on the wall at Binion's. He has not even finished -in the money- in any tournament of any decent stake since then, much less won one. He is the only "world champion" who I would not fear, or even be apprehensive about, seeing come into my normal $10-20 game at Turning Stone.