“martonas” is part of a growing breed of high stakes players where little is known about them besides their play at the tables. What we do know about martonas is that he is from Sweden, his favorite game seems to be $500/$1,000 NLHE at Full Tilt Poker, and he has had some big sessions against the likes of Di “Urindanger” Dang, Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Cole South, and more.
Unfortunately, he has also had some very bad sessions against the same players, which is a big reason why HighStakesDB shows martonas having lost $1.54 million from September of 2008 to March of 2011. But even with the huge losses, martonas has continued to square off against the world’s best players.
One game that really illustrated the roller coaster that is martonas happened in September of 2009 when he got involved in some monster pots vs. Di “Urindanger” Dang. The first pot happened at the $300/$600 NLHE stakes, and martonas raised out of position with 6s-8s, only to incite a preflop re-raising war with Urindanger; it ended with martonas shoving his stack of $60,000, then being called by Urindanger and his pocket queens. Surprisingly, martonas won the hand after hitting a flush on the turn to haul in $119,100.
The second hand once again involved martonas and Urindanger in $300/$600 NLHE, and this time, it was martonas getting the bad beat after losing a $159,567 pot. The hand started out when martonas raised $9,400, only to have Dang push $149,603 into the middle. On a board of 7h-6d-5h, martonas called with a set of 5’s versus Dang’s Kh-6h combination; Urindanger hit a flush when the river came up 3h.
Similar huge hands and crazy action has followed martonas whenever he plays. His big raises and bluffs intimidate some players, but also cause him to suffer huge downswings too. From July of 2009 to September of 2009, martonas’ erratic play cost him $850k in losses. After taking over eight months off of the game, martonas returned in July of 2009 to play more high stakes NLHE.
Unfortunately for martonas, the roller coaster continued downhill as he lost another $170k over the next three months. After taking more time off of the game, martonas showed up again at the beginning of 2011, and was initially successful after winning over $100k; however, his graph shot back down when he lost over $300k during a two-month span.