Boston, Massachusetts native Matt Hawrilenko is a Full Tilt Poker pro who was first introduced to poker by some friends in 2003. Enamored by the game, Hawrilenko started playing $0.10/$0.20 Limit Hold’em under the name “Hoss_TFB.” After some initial success in both online and live poker, Hawrilenko was signed by Full Tilt and now plays under his own name.
Hawrilenko first showed up on the HighStakesDB charts in July of 2008, and he quickly went into the red while playing $2,000/$4,000 LHE against top players like Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey and David Benyamine. By January of 2009, Hawrilenko was down by $384k. After watching his winnings fluctuate over the next year, Hawrilenko’s bankroll took a steep plunge at the end of 2009/beginning of 2010 when he was down $1.09 million.
After this debacle, Hawrilenko took a year off of online poker before returning in January of 2011. And it was quite an impressive return as Hawrilenko dominated Eugene “FishosaurusREX” Yanat, among others, in 2-7 Triple Draw games. In February alone, Hawrilenko managed to win over $1.7 million, which was second only to Gus Hansen who earned $2.4 million. By April of 2009, Hawrilenko was sitting at $413k in overall winnings.
Away from his recently successful online poker career, Hawrilenko has had an even more impressive live tournament career. Hawrilenko has 15 WSOP cashes, a gold bracelet in a $5,000 NLHE 6-max event ($1 million), and $1.45 million in overall live winnings. Since his recent run in online poker, Hawrilenko hasn’t been as active in the live tournament world.
As far as his approach to the game goes, Hawrilenko is well known for his strict mathematic approach, which helped him quickly advance up the stakes in Limit Hold’em. Apparently, he’s developed quite a knack for draw games recently too as the 2011 profits indicate.