One of the most aggressive, eccentric, and successful online poker players, Ilari Sahamies is a regular at Full Tilt Poker’s nosebleed tables. Not long ago he used to be known for his wild tilts and for playing while under the influence. When he first surfaced on the high stakes online poker scene, this guy had no respect for the already established players whatsoever. His taunting and dissing often caused his opponents to tilt, but it wasn’t like Ziiggy was aiming for that effect.
Born in 1983, in Helsinki, Finland, Sahmaies has always been a competitive person. As a child, he played various competitive sports, like basketball, soccer and he even wrestled. Later on, he took up pool and sure enough he won 2 Finnish junior championships at it. He met Patrik Antonius at a pool hall. He first played poker at the age of 15, in a home game against friends. Slowly but surely, he became hooked on the game. As his interest for poker grew, his high school results slumped. Eventually, he did manage to graduate though.
He began playing at the Casino Helsinki in 2001. From there, going pro was the next logical step. Online poker was already available in 2002-2003 when he began playing online. He started low ($0.25/$0.50) but he always felt his place was up on the largest stakes tables and went broke numerous times trying to force his way up there.
So far, Sahamies hasn’t really scored big on the live tournament scene, but his online cash game antics more than make up for that dry spell.