Best NL Tournament player is a coinflip at best. The best NL cash player I think would be Chip Reese.

How can you really choose the best NL player in the world? Poker isn't like basketball or tennis where it is quite obvious who the best player is. There is a high degree of skill involved in poker, but sometimes players can just get unlucky. Bad beats are a part of poker and everyone will experience them. We all say that Phil Ivey is the best because that's what everyone says, but have we really seen him win a bracelet? We saw him get sucked out by Moneymaker in 2004, but he really hasn't had as much success as Raymer or Hachem in tournament play. Has Negreanu done will in cash game play. In high stakes poker, we saw him lose $1 million due to loose play and cold decks. Who is the best player in the world? I don't think anyone can document that because poker is a long term sport. Short term results are many times based on luck, yet long term the variance is normalized and canceled out. And the long term results aren't really documented because we're not sitting behind Phil Ivey when he's play online poker and keeping track of how he's doing. For all we know, he could be worse than an average medium stakes player. We only think he's the best because he has a really good demeaner when he plays and everyone thinks he's god. I don't think you can actually name who the best player in NL poker is because it is really impossible to tell.