Each month, the massive sports site ESPN, releases their poker rankings, and it is called “The Nuts”. The list contains ten total players, and is more than just an overall ranking of best players in the world, but actually the ten players who are playing the best right NOW. This combines poker tournaments, online games, cash games, and any live games as well. Basically, it takes anything poker related into account when deciding what ten players should be on this list. While everything is tracked, the ratings push a bit towards live poker action, but honestly it really takes everything you could imagine into consideration.
You can always expect a few well-known names in the poker rankings, but there are also some players who may not be as well-known out there. For this month’s rankings, there were quite a few big tournaments to include in the action. The European Poker Tour featured two events, the World Series of Poker Europe was in the month of October, and there was also the World Series of Poker Circuit events to include.
The group of people who decide on these rankings includes ten total members, and they are the likes of Andrew Feldman, Bernard Lee, and Andrew Feldman, who are all ESPN poker contributors. It also features the popular magazine’s (“Bluff”) editor-in-chief Lance Bradley and editor Jessica Welman, Nahuel Ponce, who is the editor for the poker section of ESPNdeportes.com, and a few other popular poker writers and editors for sites.
Now on to the rankings, the story here is that well known players Jason Mercier and Erik Seidel remained in the top two spots for these rankings. The number three and four players were the same as well, with Eugene Katchalov and Ben Lamb falling in those spots. Mercier pulled in three cashes at the WSOPE, and Seidel pulled in two cashes.
Now comes the surprises. Shawn Buchanan jumped to the fifth spot, and was unranked before. His jump came from his four cashes at the World Series of Poker Europe, as well as a second place finish. He’s playing at the top of his game right now, and could be a name to look out for in the future. The other movements in the top ten featured Jake Cody jumping from number ten to number seven, Phil Hellmuth falling from fifth place to eighth place, and two players being added in the 9th and 10th spots. These two players added were Chris Moorman, who finished 2nd at the WSOPE Main Event, and Sam Trickett, who had a final table to add to his stats from the WSOPE and the EPT London as well.
The players who fell out of the top ten this week were three well-known players in John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, and Vanessa Selbst.