Tuesday, May 04, 2010

So Who's Really the Best Poker Cheat Out There?

Is it Doyle Brunson? Is it Phil Hellmuth? Is it Men "The Master" Nguyen? Could it possibly be Barry Greenstein...with a face like that? How about Scotty Nguyen? Or any other Nguyen, or for that matter, Tran?

Or is it Russ Hamilton?...Wait a minute! Let's keep this discussion limited to brick and mortar poker cheats! It would be impossible to crown the best poker cheat online; there are simply too many of them, and what makes that tougher is that the vast majority of them are well-hidden and remain unknown.

But wait another minute! Does that mean that Russ Hamilton is not or never was a brick and mortar poker cheat? Of course not. In fact, he most likely is or was, but I doubt he was the best.

The best nuts and bolts poker cheat in the last fifty years was probably Russ Georgiev, but he died recently, so unless his ghost is out there cheating, he's no longer around. So that brings me to two possibilites: Men Nguyen or anyone else out there we haven't yet heard about. I am going to of course choose the poker cheat we haven't yet heard about as the best, simply because the truly best poker cheat out there would remain unknown by definition. But for those cheats who have been caught or who haven't been but have cheating reputations, I am going to say the best around is Men "The Master" Nguyen. Why Men? Well, it's not because of any physical poker-cheat skills. As far as I know he's never been caught with solid evidence against him proving cheating. But in modern poker cheating the best cheats are the ones who organize poker cheat teams that operate over a long period of time without getting busted. Men Nguyen, more than any other major poker cheat, seems to have accomplished this. He has also allegedly engineered many tournament cheat-rings specializing in holding out chips and adding them back to their players' stacks at opportune moments.

Most professional brick and mortar poker cheat teams are of Russian or Vietnamese origin. Don't get me wrong: the Russians are about as good as it gets when it comes to organized brick and mortar poker cheating. But Men Nguyen's team is even better. Don't forget that Men has to operate at the same time he is a celebrity, and due to his reputation he is always under the watchful eyes of those who know or suspect he's a cheat. The Russian head-honcho cheats basically operate under the radar. Men, in spite of his celebrity and notoriety, has allegedly very sufficiently run one of the world's best brick and mortar poker-collusion teams for nearly three decades...and he's taken a helluva lot of heat! But he still has never been "caught."

Congratulations Men, you're the best poker cheat of 'em all...allegedly