Reflecting on Phil Ivey’s 2009

Poker players from all over the world generally believe that Phil Ivey is one of the, if not the best poker player in the world, both live and online at Full Tilt. Whatever poker table Ivey chooses to join, regardless of the poker form, he dominates the game, with both his skill level and mere table presence.

Now that 2009 is officially over, the stats have finally been released and everyone can now quantify an fully appreciate just what he managed to accomplish, considering how much less he played than his other high stakes peers who play so much more.

Here is a graph of what he accomplished in 2009 (from highstakesdb.com)

As you can see from the chart, Ivey treaded water for a large portion of the year. It should be noted that treading water for Ivey would be a dream come true for most other people as he fluctuated between the break even point and plus $2 million in earnings for the first 7 months of the year. Then during the late summer and throughout the end of the year, Ivey thrived, flirting with the plus $8 million plateau for quite some time. This occurred around the time Isildur1 burst on the scene which may explain some of the increased action that went his way.

Interestingly, though not entirely surprising was the fact that Ivey profited in all forms of Omaha, Stud and Hold‘em. This is the fact that is most impressive, that he is such a consistent winner in all of the games.

It will be worth watching to see if Ivey can carry over his latest momentum to a fast start in 2010.

Source:  www.aintluck.com