With the World Series of Poker over and done with, the guys over at ESPN were finally able to come in and weigh the performances – or nonperformance, for that matter – of the poker pros for the month of July. There were some pretty interesting choices this month and some that stayed the same.

Tom Dawn Did Not Make This Years List

Lamb Makes the List

Figuring quite prominently in the listings though was Ben Lamb due to his stellar performance in this year’s WSOP, especially for managing to make it into the November Niners. There’s little wonder in Lamb making it into the list. What was surprising, however, was the exclusion of Tom Dwan. Dwan had been a fixture on the list since the very beginning, whether he was on one notorious losing streaks or whether he had just won insane ‘monster pots’. But now, even with three impressive cashes in the WSOP amounting to $200k all in all, including one final table appearance, Dwan was bumped off the list. Too harsh on Tom Dwan? Perhaps, especially if you consider the fact that Phil Ivey is still on the list at seventh place even if he didn’t even appear once on the WSOP and just sulked over the “injustices” done to him by Full Tilt. Then again, this is Phil Ivey we’re talking about. He’s widely considered as the best poker player in the world. He could be sitting at the final table of the main event right now if he had played. But then we’ll never know for sure now. Hopefully, he’ll actually stop sulking next month and start playing.

Top Players

The top three spots hadn’t changed much. Jason Mercier is still number 1, having made it into three final tables this month. Erik Seidel is in the second spot and John Juanda is in the third spot. Lamb sits at fourth place, followed by Phil Hellmuth, then comes Eugene Katchalov. Phil Ivey, as mentioned, is at seventh place. Bertrand Grospellier made it into 8th place, moving up two notches from 10th place. Jake Cody made it into 9th place for being the youngest player to attain the Triple Crown. Finally, at tenth place is Daniel Negreanu, who placed 211th in the Main Event. There was some debate as to whether Brian Rast should be included, seeing as he won the Player’s Championship, but he ultimately fell short as other pros took the center stage.