A crazy month for Ilari Sahamies
Mr Consistency tops the 2011 leaderboard on Stars
With August done and dusted it's time for a quick recap of the month just gone and a quick look at the figures show that Scandinavia took the top three spots. Sweden took the top spot with the ever present Isildur1 who bagged just under $900k profit for the month followed by Norways Andreas "Skjervøy" Tobergsen on $767k and Finlands Ilari "Ilari FIN" Sahamies on $510k.
While Ilari figured high up on the weekly leaderboards right up to the last couple of days of the month and Isildur1 found himself either at the top or the bottom of either the winners or losers, it was Tobergsen who played the most consistent game, steadily chipping up throughout the month to where he now finds himself atop the years biggest winners list at PokerStars almost $2million to the good.
The first week saw Rui "PepperoniF" Cao the biggest winner, taking home just over $360k including some interesting head up encounters with Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky where the French Pro came out decidedly on top. Also during early July Ilari FIN bagged an impressive $173k in winnings, mostly courtesey of French pro Romain "moirhums" Arnaud at HU $50/$100 PLO.
The biggest losers in the first week of August were LuckyGump, Sauce123 and Isildur1 who lost a combined 1/2 million dollars between them.
The second week saw a great start for Ilari FIN, who was busy trying to eliminate an $800k hole he found himself in over at his first few months at pokerstars and he started the week with just short of a quarter of a million score, again taking a bite out of moirhums and also six figures from Rui Cao. Also finding their feet in the second week of August was old favourite Phil "MrSweets28" who found time to book a +$200k winning day, finally putting himself in the black for the year at PokerStars with more wins for Ilari FIN and Skjervøy - with these three topping the weekly leaderboard. Once again Isildur1 found himself among the biggest three losers alongside mTw-DaVin (the biggest loser with -$306k this week) and another bad week for moirhums.
In week three the action really started to hot up with regular action running from $25/$50 through to $200/$400 PLO on PokerStars although the first newsworthy winner of the week initially didn't play beyond $50/$100 as finally Viktor "Isildur1" Blom started to get something going. In some fascinating matches, especially heads up PLO with Sauce123, PepperoniF and Ilari FIN at $25/$50 and $50/$100 Isildur managed to bank close to $400k. Blom continued in the same vein during the week and in one crazy session of 6max PLO he ran up $550k in profits in just a few short hours at the $50/$100 tables taking chunks from Theo J, Jeans89 and socuitiesf before going into a familiar Isildur1 meltdown losing firstly to 1-ronnyr3 then, in a more explosive style playing heads up vs nemesis Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond who took half a mill from the erratic Swede leaving him negative $200k for the 24 hour period, a wild swing of $700k.
While all the attention may have been on Isildur1 and his insane swings, Ronny "1-ronnyr3" Kaiser was quietly going about his business in the third week of the month only topping the leaderboard once but ending the week resoundingly top of the pile as an $805k winner followed by Galfond with $508k and Isildur1, still $448 to the good despite losing a hefty wedge to Galfond. Big losers this week yet again included Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky who dropped close to half a million followed by chinese pro f2fish who lost $379 and a bd week for Rui "PepperoniF" Cao who dropped $217k.
Perhaps the most insane action of the week however occured in the final week of the month. After Canadian Pro Phil "takechip" D'Auteuil took the honours on the 24th August the rest of the week was all about two players - Ilari "Ilari FIN" Sahamies and Viktor "Isildur1" Blom who played in some epic matches at $100/$200 PLO. Once again Blom had been on a tear at the 6 max tables where he had performed brilliantly to turn a 200k loss into what looked like being a $300k win after battering 1-ronnyr3 for $400k and taking the remainder from Niki "RealAndyBeal" Jedlicka and Toweliestar. However, as we have come to expect from Blom, he wasn't content with that so sought to play heads up against the inform Sahamies - a decision which was to cost him close to half a million dollars as the Finn ran riot in an early morning session - totally dominating his deflated foe. Sahamies went on to add over $150k more to his swag before the days end at which point he had closed in on $1.5 million in winnings in just three weeks.
Not to be outdone it was now time for Blom to turn up the heat and in a blistering 24 hours he himself had won over a million dollars, pretty much all from a tilting Ilari FIN. Although Blom certainly ran very hot in one particular $700k session he also outplayed his Finnish opponent as Sahamies himself admitted in the blog post he wrote following his defeat.
Of course the story couldn't end befor Isildur1 decided to spread the wealth and promptly lost back over half a million of his hard fought winnings (managing to hold on to the title of PokerStars biggest winner of 2011 for just a few hours!) over the next two days while Skjervøy picked up the slack, booking a nice six figure win towards the end of the week, as did RealAndy Beal. It was a disappointing end to the week for Galfond, 1-ronnyr3 and Gavin "gavz101" Cochrane who has not been able to keep up his pre WSOP form since his return to PokerStars and has in fact dropped over $450k in August alone.
So, with the results for August now in the bag the PokerStars 2011 leaderboard shows Skjervøy leading with $1.95m followed by PepperoniF on $1.44 mill, gavz101 on $1.24m and Isildur1 on $1.2m.
With the highstakes action showing no signs of slowing down let's look forward to an exciting last quarter of the year as more and more US players make their way either across the border or across the pond to resume their passion for online poker.