This is actually a video. Patrik is THAT stoic. (via CardPlayer)
Is Patrik Antonius the greatest poker player of all time? Based on what we know about his winnings, Antonius is certainly one of the most successful online cash game players ever.
It’s tough to put a specific number on the entire career earnings total for Antonius. The 39-year-old Finnish pro in a legend in poker lore, and is still heavily involved in some of the biggest live cash games in the world.
Let’s take a closer look at the unbelievable career of Patrik Anonius.
One of poker’s true living legends, Antonius’ high stakes results from the glory days of Full Tilt Poker are still mind-boggling to this day.
Antonius has not one, but two screen names that are in the top 10 overall in cash game profit in high stakes on Full Tilt Poker. High Stakes DB started tracking high stakes cash games on Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars beginning in 2007. The following list, which includes cash games across all poker variants at stakes $25/$50 and up, is found on High Stakes DB as of March 2020:
Antonius’ FinddaGrind screen name sits at No. 8 on the list, with $5,716,051 in profits. Antonius earned around half of that total ($2.34 million) in his first year playing on Full Tilt, from July 2007 to July 2008. Antonius’ game of choice was Pot Limit Omaha, and between the FinddaGrind screen name, as well as his Luigi66369 screen name ($775,800), Antonius was up more than $3 million in the high stakes games on Full Tilt.
At that point, Antonius became a Team Full Tilt pro, started playing under his real name, and started posting even bigger wins.
Antonius became a member of Team Full Tilt in June 2008, and the epic results kept coming.
His battles against Tom “Durrr” Dwan and Victor “Isildur1” Blom are the stuff of legends in poker. Antonius, Blom, Dwan, Phil Ivey and a few others were the core of what spectators called “Rail Heaven”, which were the highest stakes games on Full Tilt from 2008 through online poker’s Black Friday in 2011.
With both NL and PLO games running at blinds of $500/$1000, these were and still are the highest stakes poker games ever seen online. As such, these games would draw big numbers of spectators to the virtual rail.
Antonius crushed the games at these nosebleed stakes, and was up $11,840,000 according to High Stakes DB in August 2011. Antonius’ heads-up matches against Blom and Dwan were host to some of the biggest pots ever seen in online poker.
The biggest recorded pot in online poker history took place during a heads-up PLO match between Antonius and Blom in 2009; check out this video with analysis from Pawel Nazarewicz. The hand that created this pot, which ballooned to $1,356,947 starts at 6:15 in this video.
Antonius went head-to head against Dwan in The original Durrrr Challenge pitted in what was supposed to be a 50,000-hand match between the two. The rules of the challenge dictated that the 50,000 hands would be played with the blinds, at minimum, set at $200/$400. Antonius would receive an additional $1.5 million from Dwan if he finished ahead at the end of the challenge, while Antonius would owe Dwan $500,000.
The Durrrr Challenge did not end well for Antonius, who went on the biggest downswing of his Full Tilt run and found himself down more than $2 million after around 41,000 hands. At that point, Antonius pulled the plug on the challenge, buying out for an undisclosed amount.
In spite of that downswing, Antonius’ overall success on Full Tilt is rivaled only by Ivey in total winnings. Take a look at his overall results under his own name here:
Antonius took a break from playing under his own screen name after 2011 before reviving it briefly form a couple of months at the beginning of 2013. He retired the name for good after that, but his Full Tilt playing days weren’t done.
Under the FinddaGrind account, Antonius added another $3.48 million to his overall profits in 2013 and 2014. Overall, Antonius’ total Full Tilt Poker winnings, from his three known screen names combined, totals $17,807,406.
The Full Tilt totals speak for themselves; however don’t take into account Antonius buyout to end the Durrr Challenge early. It’s also unknown how Antonius has fared on other poker sites.
His live tournament earnings are known, however, and according to Hendon Mob Antonius’ career tournament cashes total more than $12 million. Those numbers don’t account for total profit, of course, but they put Antonius at the top of the the list of Finland’s all-time leading tournament money winners.
Antonius often in Bobby plays in some of the biggest live cash games in the world at Bobby’s Room inside the Bellagio Las Vegas. He’s also been a fixture in the high-stakes Triton Poker cash games that have become some of the highest-stakes televised games in poker history since their inception in the late 2010s.
With the exception of when the cameras are rolling in the Triton games, we can only imagine what goes on and how much money changes hands in these games at the highest of stakes in live poker. High Stakes DB estimated Antonius’ net worth at around $15 million, which perhaps gives us some idea.
Antonius still has a keen feel for the game in the modern era; let’s end this piece with Antonius putting his skills on display in a tournament at the Triton London 2019 event:
Leave a Comment