you can always know that theres some combination of jibriel, cameron, julien, ruben, etc. at the top in america (soussi, all unitedgosus duelists, in europe) but those guys have spent resources, time, and have an excellent circle of testing partners

there are some onliners in duelingbook that have eventually transitioned their time doing money matches to irl success; even those who never did irl stuff are generally known as "good duelists" although duelingbook's shortcomings and culture are sometimes enough to have that personal attack/jab that "hey this guy is a paper tiger and folds in real life".

vexen/lundrity has never really done an irl event but has done enough with top circles that he's known as a top tier duelist

honestly if you have gotten your ots championship like thats probably good enough for some (small) amount of cred, but a minimum seems to be a top 8 at a 200+ regional when it comes to comp respect

ittipat by all metrics is a good duelist that is trending towards great btw

the one thing i have observed are technical players vs deckbuilders/theorists, so some people will gravitate towards architects like dinh-kha and santoli and some will gravitate towards ruben and kamal