Old name terrible results,
The start of a new year always brings the promise of another 12 months of fast and furious action at the virtual felt and we were not to be disappointed by the first few weeks of 2012 as we saw big pots, big names and big swings at the PokerStars online tables. We also saw the introduction at HSDB of tracking for the Stars Draw and HORSE games - games which can run as big as any big bet game when you get the right mix of players, nosebleed blinds and big bankrolls. In January we saw it all and here's how it went down.
The first week saw a big win for the player rumoured to be none other than the legend that is Phil Ivey, RaiseOnce who worked up a $486k win against GVOZDIKA55 in two long sessions playing $1000/$2000 HORSE. RaiseOnce lost a little in the other games, including a $27k loss in PLO but still ended the week as PokerStars biggest winner with a tidy $427k profit. Also putting in a good week was bernard-bb who took home over $300k playing PLO with 1Il|1Il|1il| continuing his great run from the back end of 2011 with a $211k profit for the week.
The first week also saw a lot of action from railbirds favourite Viktor "Isildur1" Blom, by far the most active of any of the weeks top 10 winners, logging over 17,000 hands on his way to a $91k win - although as is tradition with Isildur1 (and of which we would see much more later in the month) his weekly score doesn't really reflect the highs and lows of his week as he both topped the leader and loserboard during the week, making some big scores and taking some big hits. Isildur had a busy week all round as he stormed to his first live victory in the Super High Roller event at the PCA to net a fabulous $1.25 million first prize among a tough final table which incuded Daniel Negreanu, Jonathan Duhameil, Dan Shak and Mike McDonald. The biggest hand of the week also fell to Isildur1;
A decent pot for a pair of 9's! - $121k pot
The most active player of the week however was Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond who had an Isildur-esque week swinging form deficit to profit on a daily basis, finally ending up a $68k winner for the week. His month was to get much worse however.
The biggest losers from the first week of the year were GVOZDIKA55 with his $484k HORSE loss followed by the familiar face of gav101 whose downswing from last summer has never really recovered. He lost $225k.
The biggest crowd puller for the second week in January was the back and forth heads up battle between Isildur1 and Sander "Berndsen12" Berndsen which raged for several days with big swings in both directions as the players duked it out at the $50/$100 and $100/$200 PLO tables. In fact seven of the weeks top ten biggest hands came from their encounters, the biggest of which can be seen below;
Isildur1 goes for broke with the nut flush draw but Berndsen12's flopped set takes the spoils - $232k pot
It was Berndsen12 who had the better of these encounters and as such he ended the week as the second biggest winner, showing a $323k profit, whereas Isildur1 Isildur1 had a shocker of a week, also losing in the PLO ring games to end at the top of the loserboard with a -$447k week.
Topping the leaderboard in week two was a player who only appeared on PokerStars from 9th Janury this year and who, in the past three weeks has been on a great run - patpatman. It all started here as he bulldozed his way to a weekly profit of $540k. Adept at both NLHE and PLO patpatman's initial success came at PLO before he had some epic scores at the $200/$400 NLHE the short handed game and, in particular NLHE regular and last years biggest NLHE winner, English player Kanu7 against whom he picked up this huge pot;
patpatman call Kanu7's huge river bluff - $216k pot
At this point MrSweets28 was still doing well and added a further $285k to his kitty in the second week of January and a resurgent Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, who had been almost absent from the high stakes scene since losing a truckload in September last year, taking a $247k profit for the week. In the same PLO games where the aforementioned names profited Ben86 did not do quite so well, losing $358 for the week with RaiseOnce giving back most of his previous weeks HORSE winnings at the Draw tables, losing $350k.
The second week of the month ended with New York businessman John Dibella overcoming the odds and some serious talent to walk away as the new PCA Main event champion and a winners cheque of $1.775 million to go with it after getting very lucky three handed when his 66 managed to best both Faraz Jaka's 77 and Kyle Julius's AA to give him a chip lead he never surrendered thereafter.
The third week saw the start of MrSweets28's decline as he sat second on the weeks loserboard losing $219k playing PLO, with only arbianight losing more this week, dropping $330k in both through a combination of draw game and PLO defeats. RaiseOnce completed the bottom three losing $212k and falling into negative equity for the year after his tremendous start.
The charmingly named BiatchPeople who won just over $300k largely in the HORSE games where both RaiseOnce and arbianight had come unstuck this week. He was followed by German pro ragen70 who added $271k to his $200k+ score from the previous week which at this stage put him as January's biggest winner showing a $682k profit. The third week also saw a recovery of sorts for Ben86 who nearly evacuated his $300k loss from the previous week, racking up over $250k in winnings between 16th and 22nd January.
The final week of the month was by far the most exciting as several players made very big scores and the action was relentless - due mainly to the exploits of, you guessed it, Viktor "Isildur1" Blom. You can read my reports onhis crazy few days here and here and here. Needless to say the action involved an unreasonable amount of hours play, boom and bust on a continual basis including high six figure swings in both directions, Isildur running a couple of $3k buy ins up to $700k (before promptly losing most of it back) and even turning a $109 tourney buy in into over $100k at the cash tables before donating it all and more back to his opponents.
Isildur1 also found time to win the biggest pot of the month this week;
Isildur1 hits the nuts on the turn after flopping beautifully - $355k pot
The week however was not all about Isildur1 as Jeans89 had a stellar week at the PLO tables, racking up a hugely impressive $645k score as he took chunks out of both Isildur1 and out of highstakes fish nasud 11 in some intriguing heads up matches.
Also on a tear was Sauce123 who put in a near half million week, bagging $476k in winnings, followed by two $400k+ scores for Phil "takechip" D'Auteuil and Ronny "1-ronnyr3" Kaiser with patpatman adding a further $331k to his monthly haul.
These big scores had to be accounted for somewhere and it looks like when all evened out the money had largely been distributed, one way of the other, from the generous coffers of Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond who lost close to $800k in the final week of the month making him by far the week (and indeed months) biggest loser. With Terje "Terken89" Augdal and Fake Love888 following behind with -$374k and -$303k respectively.
So, with the month accounted for it is patpatman, the player who has only been with us for just over three weeks who bested January with an impressive $858k profit, followed by Jeans89, whose last weeks phenomenal score gave him a monthly profit of $699k and then Sauce123 who wrote off his September 2011 losses with a $671k win.
Behind Galfond, a $664k loser for the month sat GVOZDIKA55 who, after his terrible first week ended up a $500k loser with long90110 third on the monthly loser list having dropped $370k.
Let's see what February brings.