In Las Vegas live poker games the old-school poker players are still the top dogs, and even the really old-school players such as Doyle Brunson are still able to compete in the biggest games against all the best poker players in the town.
However, online poker is already a different story, in online poker the young guys appear to be the biggest winner on every level.
But the question is who are the absolute best players of these young poker players? Well, everyone has their own opinion, but in this article I will reveal my opinion which based on what has happened over the last couple hours at Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and other big online poker rooms.
For the sake of this article young online poker player is defined as someone who is mostly known for his online poker playing (this for an example excludes the 2009 World Series of Poker champion Joe Cada from this list) and is under 30 years old.
Best 3 young online poker players:
1: Tom Dwan aka Durrrr
Tom Dwan who is better known online with his online poker nick Durrrr really is the face of online poker.
According to some stories he began playing poker with $50 deposit at paradise poker under his father’s account (not something we can recommend) and the rest is history as they say.
After building some bankroll at Paradise Poker. He moved Pokerstars online poker site where began crushing the no limit texas holdem games over under his pokerstars nick Holdem_NL.
Thanks to his aggressive and sometimes even reckless style he was able to move quickly from the $2/$4 no limit games to $10/$20. These games were at the time the biggest at PokerStars and by playing against the toughest players of the network there he really built his bankroll that allowed him to get where he is today. This also when he began building some name for himself in the online poker world
After the PokerStars games began feeling too small for him Tom Dwan made his way to Full Tilt Poker which is known as the online poker room that is filled with poker pros. Now, most people wouldn’t even think about playing in the same high stakes table as Phil Ivey, but not only did Durrrr play against him in the same 6 person tables he also began challenging him to headsup no limit texas holdem matches. While their matches were always extremely tough and neither player was really crushing the other one, Tom became so well known thanks to them that he was able to get a sponsorship deal with Full Tilt Poker.
What is even more remarkable is that he became the first online poker player to become part of the actual team full tilt poker (most of their pros are “only” full tilt poker pros) which includes only several other poker players all of whom are extremely well known.
Even though you can these catch Tom Dwan playing in highstakes poker, poker after dark and in other popular poker TV-shows he still also remains extremely active in the online poker highstakes games and keeps playing against the other top players.
As far as his online poker winnings go, no-one but himself knows, but most people believe that he has won over $5million from online poker.
2: Phil Galfond aka OMGClayAiken
If Phil Galfond was still as active online poker player as he was 2 years ago he might have very well taken the number one spot on this list.
It is rumoured that Phil Galfond has won even more money from online poker than Tom Dwan, however as he seems to play very rarely these days it is extremely hard to say how he ranks against the players playing the biggest games today.
On the other hand by leaving the poker games behind when he felt like they were getting too tough for him (or he no longer being willing to risk as big part of his money as playing the biggest requires) he really proved how smart poker player he is and how (unlikely many other poker players playing those games) he really isn’t craving for the attention that comes with playing the big games
3: theASHMAN103
Deciding who to list as the third best young online poker player was really hard. After some pondering I decided that theASHMAN103 deserved the spot. While he might not have won as much money as some other young guys playing the biggest games he is almost certainly the youngest player playing the biggest games at the moment.
