BoSPOKER

In a recent thread at 2+2, there was a post on the top 11 winning and losing high stakes poker players online. For your convenience, here are the top 11 and their recent earnings:

1. Phil Ivey with $12,901,299
2. OMGClayAiken with $7,651,217
3. Patrik Antonius with $7,272,543
4. Isildur1 with $5,033,951
5. Urindanger with $4,705,220
6. trex313 with $4,588,666
7. howisitfeellike with $4,073,977
8. Ziigmund with $3,584,047
9. KaiBuxxe with $3,186,717
10. theASHMAN with $2,960,874
11. Mark Vos with $2,906,447

Phil Ivey clearly makes a very decent living from high stakes games. His playing in live tournaments must simply be a vanity and a way of getting better sponsorship deals. I recall an interview where he mentioned that most tournaments cannot compare to high stakes ring games in terms of income for him, due to the amount of money that can be won per hand in a ring game. He really is just that good.

It’s encouraging to see Patrik Antonius ranking so highly, especially as that same forum post revealed that Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan of the durrrr Challenge is no longer in the top 50 high stakes earners. Interestingly, both Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius are members of Team Full Tilt, an honour that Dwan recently received as well. Perhaps the two more successful high stakes players can teach durrrr how to have a long lasting poker career – like not challenging everyone to incredibly high stakes games and deliberately setting the odds against yourself. In Dwan’s defence, he is doing very well in the challenge currently, though the balance of wins seems to be swinging to Antonius once more.

Now, here is the list of the bottom 11 from worst to the least worst:

1. noataima at -$7,126,621
2. lady marmelade at -$6,632,177
3. patatino at -$5,924,545
4. Gus Hansen at -$5,520,219
5. elmariachimacho at -$4,161,883
6. Niki Jedlicka at -$2,396,580
7. LarsLuzak at -$2,030,695
8. ahtata at -$1,615,234
9. MR B 2 U SON at -$1,570,698
10. KObyTAPOUT at -$1,502,831
11. Brandon Adams at -$1,477,492

The total losses for those 11 are around $39,958,975. Wow, that’s a lot of money, and bad news for Gus Hansen with his $5,924,545 in losses. I really feel for the big money players on a downswing in fortunes, but I also weep for the fact that they are losing amounts that may exceed my lifetime income! Oh well, more power to them, and here’s hoping they can break through their losing streaks.

The moral of this story is simple: do not mess with Full Tilt Poker’s Phil Ivey or Patrik Antonius unless you have somehow leveraged a massive advantage over them. Also, when you play high stakes, the losses can be staggering. Have the bankroll to survive a bad run, or else stick to lower stakes.

Do you have your own stories about winning streaks or losing runs in your online poker play? Pour your heart out in the comments.