In any game of strategy and skill, there’ll be moments of pure genius (or luck). We ranked the greatest poker moves of all time… and the results might surprise you.

From the many plays made by poker legend, Daniel Negreanu and Richie Aprile’s iconic winning play in The Sopranos, to the plays that led to actual fights at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), there have been some truly unmissable moments in poker history and pop culture.

To find the greatest, we’ve analyzed thousands of hours of gameplay and ranked the world’s top 20 poker plays just for you.

Whether you want to marvel at the mastery of these poker legends or learn tactics and strategies for your own games, this is a definitive list of every poker move worth seeing at least once. 

The Top 20 Greatest Poker Plays

If there are two things we can learn from this list, it’s that one, stakes matter. The most watched play on our list was the result of a £21m prize pot.

And two, Daniel Negreanu is truly one of the greatest of all time, with three games in our top five (and more popular than James Bond, here at least). 

The Top 20 Greatest Poker Plays: The Highlights

• Daniel Negreanu was featured the most on this list, making a total of over $52 million in winnings across his career. $23.7 million came from just the plays in this article
• The most popular competition to feature was the World Series of Poker, suggesting that truly is where the best players and games are held. 
• 35% of iconic top poker moves are from popular films or TV shows, including The Sopranos and James Bond.

• Some of the most popular videos of poker moves or competitions involve fights between the players (which probably influences how many views these videos get). This includes the WSOP in 2006, 2008, and 2004.

   

The Takeaways: How To Make The Greatest Poker Play

If you haven’t got time to watch all 20 greatest poker plays of all time, but you’re wondering how to make your own, we’ve done the work for you. Follow these steps that even the pros use to bring home the big bucks and even bigger bragging rights.

Think in ranges, not hands

Beginners almost always make the mistake of thinking in terms of hands. The problem is that this is short-sighted and often leads to silly errors and lower winnings.

The greatest poker players out there, however, like the ones featured in these plays, think in terms of ranges. The range is the spectrum of hands that opponents could have at a given point in the game.

This allows them to more accurately calculate what the pot odds are whilst remaining flexible enough to adapt should another player throw a curveball of some kind.

Ditch your favorite hand

Ditch your favorite, or go-to hand if you want to avoid making a costly mistake, especially if you always play with the same players or friends.

Not only does it make you unpredictable, but it means you’re more adaptable, giving you the competitive edge.

Sure, you can always play your favourite hand if it’s advantageous, but ditching it allows you to keep adapting and developing as the game progresses. You’ll pay more attention to both the game and your opponents tells so you can react strategically.

Adopt a consistent strategy

All too often in poker, both experienced and inexperienced players alike go in with a strategy, only to abandon it at the first sign of trouble or because they’re bored. This is usually the beginning of the end.

The players capable of the greatest plays know the importance of consistently applying a strategy that they know works, either from experience or by studying plays like those we’ve included here.

This doesn’t mean using the same strategy every game (remember, ditch your favorites), but sticking to one strategy for the entirety of a single game.

While you won’t win every hand, having a consistent and winning strategy is the only way to achieve consistent, replicable results that will see you win time and time again.

If you change things up, always have a reason

Even the best poker players sometimes drop their consistent strategy for a game or two or change mid-game. Unlike others, who do this “to try something new” or because they’re on tilt, they always have a reason.

One reason an elite poker player may change their strategy to be more offensive or defensive, is if players are giving off vibes that suggest your ranges aren’t right. Another is if they’re playing dangerously on tilt, putting you on the backfoot.

Adapting allows them to keep their cool in an unpredictable game, rather than subconsciously doubting every move they make, like a less experienced player would.

Stop playing bad games

We all want to run before we can walk. That’s why players will challenge against those just out of their league, even if they keep beating them and winning their money.

Remember, you only win by being the best player at the table, and by having opponents who make large - but stupid - mistakes. If that’s not you, walk away. Study more. Practice more. Come back later and then show them who is boss.

Tilt is never the answer

Going on tilt never helps you; it only ever helps your opponents. It depletes your chips and kills your confidence so much that a fun game can quickly become a nightmare.

Things will never 100% go your way in any game of poker, but letting your emotions dictate your actions only ever compounds the problem, turning a minor problem into a money pit that just keeps on burning your cash.

The best poker players keep their emotions out of their games, allowing them to stay objective enough to know when a game is lost before all their chips are gone.

Methodology

To determine which poker moves were the greatest of all time, we collected the top watched YouTube videos for a variety of poker-related terms, including but not limited to, ‘poker moves’ ‘poker hand’, and ‘poker’. We then ranked these by the total number of views.

Next, we took the top 10 for each term and ranked them based on how many times they appeared. For any compilation videos, we included each single video as an entry to the list and added points to the rankings if any of the moves were included multiple times.

Once compiled, we ranked all this data overall and took the top 20 to be included in our list of the poker plays of all time.