Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies has been keeping rather busy at the high stakes tables of late. In the middle of last week he was involved in some nosebleed action against Tom Dwan, Gus Hansen and Cole South. Although Sahamies suffered some losses over the 24 hour session, he did manage to collect the four biggest pots along the way, the biggest of which was when the Finn hit a straight on the turn while being an underdog to Dwan, and collecting $336,597.

A couple of days later and Sahamies was involved in the action once again, this time he was up against Phil Ivey, David Benyamine, John Juanda and Di  “Urindanger” Dang. It was Dang who had the honours of winning the biggest pot this time. Ivey held two aces, Ziigmund flopped two pair and Dang flopped a set of kings. 1vey pushed all in with his last $63k, Dang raised and Ziigmund called. The turn and the river improved none of the hands so Urindanger won the $322,803 pot.

On Thursday night it was Cardrunners instructor Cole South who was dominating the Full Tilt $200/$400 PLO tables.  Among his opponents were sunra18, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Chau Giang and Gus Hansen who has been an ever present at the high stakes tables during the last few weeks.

It was against the Dane that South had his biggest wins, the biggest of which was a $446,583 pot, won when South held two pairs after the flop to Hansen’s pair of aces and then went on to hit the nut flush on the river. This was one of numerous hands over $100k that Hansen lost to South, who over the last couple of days has won over $800,000 at the PLO tables.

After his encounter with Brian Hastings, in the Early hours of yesterday morning, Gus Hansen was playing Tom “durrrr” Dwan  on Full Tilt’s PLO tables. Hansen was back in good form winning eight of the top ten biggest hands of the session, including the biggest pot of the session when Hansen’s jack high flush won him the $185,385 pot.

With both the two protagonists suffering lean spells this year, with Dwan turning round a $4 million deficit and Gus now back in winning form, it will always be entertaining when these two meet at the tables.

Earlier this week it looked like Gus Hansen had overcome his recent run of bad form when he came away from a PLO session with a profit of $898,000, only to lose a lot of his profit to Brian Hastings the next day.

Gus has been hitting  the PLO tables in the last week and it looks like he is back to his indomitable self. In a session at the $300/$600 6-Max tables at Full Tilt, he was up against the likes of Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, David Benyamine, trex313, sunra18 and Urindanger. It was against sunra18 that Hansen scooped one of the biggest pots. Sunra18 pushed all in after the flop of 2-8-3,  holding A-A-K-9 and Gus called with 4-5-4-5 and hit his full house when the 4-8 came on the remaining two community cards, collecting the $172,228 pot.

It was on the $200/$400 tables that Brian Hastings got the better of Hansen. In past meetings between these two, Gus has usually been the victor and this time he was gaining an advantage but Hastings fight his way back and end the session with a $596,000 profit.

Tom “durrrr” Dwan was at the PLO tables on Full Tilt poker until the early hours of Monday morning, playing against the likes of Gus Hansen, John Juanda, David Benyamine, LarsLuzak,and HarrisMP. Despite being involved in four of the biggest pots of the session, unfortunately only one of those would go in his favour.  Dwan lost two pots to Juanda, $160,000 and $129,000 and a pot to LarsLuzak  to the tune of $155,000.

The pot that did go his way was the biggest hand of the session. Dwan flopped two pairs against LarLuzak and HarrisMP and then hit a set of kings on the river. Neither of his two opponents hands improved so Dwan scooped the $280,000. Dwan ended the session down by $500,000, but he is still in profit for the year, not bad considering he was down $4 million for a while this year.  

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Sooner or later Niki “KaiBuxxe”  Jedlicka’s winning streak was going to come to an abrupt halt and it did yesterday against Patrik Antonius. After winning over $1.5 million during his last couple of sessions, Jedlicka lost over $500,000 to Patrik Antonius in the latest session.

The biggest pot that Antonius took down was $395,668 when he hit a full house, jacks full of fours on the river. but the biggest pot of the session went to Jedlicka who won $409,480 with a queen high straight.

After his successful return to the high stakes tables, Niki “KaiBuxxe” Jedlicka continued his run of hot form when he took on Finnish online superstar Patrik Antonius on the $300/$600 6-Max  PLO tables.  In this session he came away with over $600.000 in profit, taking down the four largest pots of the night. The sessions largest pot came when Antonius tried to bluff Jedlicka out of the hand on the river when he was only holding one pair and Jedlicka had hit his queen high flush, handing him the $563k pot.

Phil Galfond has become one of the most respected and revered players at the high stakes online tables.  He regularly wins on the $200/$400 and $500/$1,000 no-limit holdem and pot-limit Omaha games on Full Tilt. In the last twelve months he has managed to win around $7 million on Full Tilt alone. He has managed to replicate his online success in the world of live tournaments, as he managed to win a gold bracelet in the $5,000 pot-limit Omaha event with rebuys at the 2008 WSOP against a final table that included the likes of David Benyamine, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Nedreanu.  

Phil Galfond was majoring in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison when he started playing poker online, mainly playing. Within eight months he was earning $50 per hour crushing the sit-and-gos and then went on to start buying into the biggest sit-and-go tournaments to be found online, with a $1,000 buy-in, Galfond was consistently winning at that level as well.

It was twoplustwo.com that Galfond started to discuss poker strategies with a group of likeminded young poker pros that included Tom Dwan and David Benefield. In fact Tom Dwan has banned Galfond from taking part in the durrrr challenge due to their close friendship. 

It was in early 2006 that Galphond made the transition into the world of online cash games, which at first proved to be frustrating as his attempts to move up in online stakes left a big whole in his bankroll. But his perseverance paid off, obsessevly analysing his game and that of his opponents, by the end of 2007  he was regularly beating the $300/$600 games. 

More recently Galfond has been  instrumental in the launch of Bluefire Poker, an online poker training site that focuses on cash games. Bluefire Poker made headlines recently when the site challenged President Barack Obama to a $1 million game of poker.

Austrian online poker sensation Niki “KaiBuxxe” Jedlicka made a return to the high stakes tables this week when he was back on Full Tilt Poker playing $200/$400 6-Max PLO and $300/$600 6-Max PLO. It was playing the pot-limit Omaha cash tables in 2007 that Jedlicka managed to win over $3, million in a year. Unfortunately his run of form did not last and the Austrian ended up losing a lot of his winning, so Jedlicka has been absent from the high stakes tables for a while.

His return to the tables has seen a return to his previous form as he managed to win over $1 million from the likes of Dwan, Patrik Antonius and David Benyamine.  Jedlicka managed to win several $100,000 pots, the biggest being $161,447 when he hit the nut straight on the river.Tom Dwan was the biggest loser during the session losing over $800,000.

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With the end of the 2009 WSOP, the high stakes action tables are now back in full swing. Late Monday night, instead of the usual heads-up action, the players could be found at the full ring PLO cash tables on Full Tilt Poker. Among the players seated at the tables were the usual high stakes suspects including Tom “durrrr” Dwan, Gus Hansen, Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, Brian Townsend, Di “Urindanger” Dang, David Benyamine, John Juanda and Sami “LarsLuzak” Kelopuro.

The action was at the $200/$400 pot-limit Omaha tables and at the height of the action there was nine tables in play.  Obviously with this kind of action going on, there was a lot of big pots to be fought over and the biggest pot of this session was won by the Danish Full Tilt pro Gus Hansen. Hansen hit the nut flush draw after Dwan had pushed all in on the turn with two pairs and a flush draw. John Juanda also called Dwan with a set and a gut-shot straight draw, but neither player’s hand improved so Hansen collected the $459,846 pot, which is one of the top ten biggest online  pots of the year so far.

Despite the big pot win it was not Hansen who was the nights biggest winner, that was Dwan who finished the session up nearly $800,000 after a couple of $300,000 pot wins.

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