American sports giant ESPN have released their top 10 poker players for the month of March. The panel of judges, made up of some well-respected writers in the poker industry, have decided Phil Ivey is still the best poker player in the world.

Ivey retains the number one spot after progressing to the second round of the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship and the judges believe it will be extremely difficult to knock him off his perch as there is not a game in the world where he would be +EV.

Second in the list is Jason Mercier who exploded onto the poker scene a year or so ago and has had some amazing results. Recently he made it to the Elite Eight stage of the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship and also finished a more than respectable third at the LA Poker Classic High-roller event for a cool $141,700. When the rankings first aired back in December, Mercier was ranked sixth and he said then he would never better third spot.

Completing the top three is Tom Dwan who moves up five places after an amazing start to 2010, including winning $2.7m in the past week at online poker. Making up the top ten are Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Daniel Alaei, Eric Baldwin, Cole South and Scott Seiver.