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Welcome to iGaming.org’s new weekly roundup of Online Poker’s biggest high stakes winners. Here, I will be recapping some of the biggest action of the week either as part of, or in supplement to, a list of the “Elite Eight” grinders of the week. We’ll be taking the week from Wednesday to Wednesday in order to let the weekend clashes and challenges take place…as well as the revenge matches, desperate runs at breaking even to and to allow 72 hour Sunday degen sessions to wrap up. So, without further ado, here is the Elite 8.
#1 – Phil “Polarizing” Ivey – Yes, the great one has gone back to using a screen name and yes, it makes me sick to use it. However, not quite as sick as the 6-month slide Ivey has been on up until recently. However, the $488,796 score (in 4241 hands) gave “No Home Jerome” (see, isn’t that better?) the uptick he needed to start pulling out of the over 2 million dollar hole he’s in.
#2 – ronnyr37617 – The 54th largest all time online winner fired up the PLO money machine this week and snapped off a strong push this week. A $303,800 score over 85 sessions and a hair over 3500 hands added almost a 30% bump to his previous lifetime million dollar earning total.
#3 – Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond – Galfond, who is the third largest online poker winner of all time, help keep that position cemented by coming in third this week. He pulled in a neat $281,786 over a concise 1923 hands. The better part of this win was $157,200 earned at the 2k/4k 2-7 Triple Draw tables and $115,300 at the 200/400 PLO tables in a killer session on Saturday. While the nearly quarter million dollar score is barely a drop in the bucket compared to his $9,190,043 lifetime earnings, it never hurts to shore up some grinding capital.
#4 – Douglas “WCGRider” Polk – After a BIG dip this summer, this week Polk is in a much better spot. The $278,351 jump pulls Polk back up to a total lifetime earnings of $346,495, meaning this one week nearly equals his total lifetime earnings. This primarily came in a HUNL match vs. Ben “sauce1234” Sulsky at the 100/200 level for over $190,000. Sulsky and Polk are locked in a HU challenge, and this lead has him running away with it.
#5 – Jens “Ingenious89” Kyllönen – 2013 has been good to the Finnish 6 max PLO Beast, but this $241,478 score in a mere 3,069 hands helps get him way back in the black for a lifetime total of $418,720 over 100,739 tracked hands.
#6 – Dan “jungleman12” Cates – Along with the particularly big Tuesday score to wrap up this week (see below), Cates finished up $235,069 grinding out 3,125 hands versus online poker’s best and brightest.
#7 – Patrick “FinddaGrind” Antonius – Yes, one of the best known names in high stakes poker is back on Full Tilt and using an alias, but he’s also continuing a tear in 2013 with a $198,907 score in a paltry 1969 hands.
#8 – Angela1987 – Angela1987 makes a debut on the list scoring a lifetime high $189,153, all in PLO. Angela1987 is still a mystery account and will remain so…until you spill the beans to @MattCWaldron on Twitter. So spill already
Elite 8 Bubblers:
#9 – Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon (known for battling poker computer Polaris.)
#10 – Follow The Haek
Honorable Mentions (for playing everyone in rare air this week): no_Ola and Benny “psychobenny” Spindler.
Big Action Briefs:
Just Tuesday, the Durrrr Challenge vs. Dan Cates finally resumed and “jungleman12” made the best of it. In the match, Cates jumped up $100k quick, only to see Dwan grind it all back and then stay up for over 3 hours. Nearing the ¾ mark of the challenge match, Cates swung into action for 90 minutes, crushing $197,000 before a mutually agreed stop. Cates taps nearly $200,000 onto his 7 figure lead, leaving Tom Dwan in need of a miracle to catch up by the end of the allotted number of hands.
Tuesday also saw Victor Blom turn his deep slide around (or at least pump the breaks a little) playing $500/1000 cap NLHE (mainly) against Ike “luvetheWNBA” Haxton (taking $144k) and then RookieNFL snatching a whooping $415k then logging off $434,000 in the black. All that on the back of a late night before when he turned a $600 HU SnG into $280,300 moving up through 100/200 2-7, 50/100 & 200/400 PLO, then to the 8 game tables where a Macau account “puntingpeddler” quit loser to Isildur1 to the tune of $331k (and that was after scraping some back in 300/600 PLO.) And yes, Blom continued his quest after midnight and burned off a bit of the profit, but as I mentioned, he recovered well the next day. That said, the sliding Swede finished +$764,300 positive over two sessions. That was very much needed coming off getting sacked by Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene for $279k at 500/1000 PLO CAP on Sunday and previous losses this week.
That’s it for my first “This Week in High Stakes Online Poker” wrap up for iGaming.org. Let me know what you think.