New Coach: Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen's $1.7 Million Month

Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen is yet another player to join our team of video producers at PokerStrategy.com. The EPT winner is currently one of the best PLO cash game players around, taking down a cool $1.7 million in April.

Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen - our new video producer

• First big online cash: $300,000 at the ECOOP 2008
• Biggest live cash: PokerStars.com EPT Copenhagen Main Event 2009 (around $1.1 million)
• Winnings: up to the end of 2010, $1 million in PLO cash games
• Breakthrough: $1.7 million winnings in April 2011 at the PLO nosebleeds
• Screen name: Ingenious89 at Full Tilt Poker
• PokerStrategy.com: video producer since June 2011

You can get your first taste of Jeans' handiwork on Sunday when his first video is released for
Diamond members and above.

Introducing our new coach

$1 million winnings in one day – only in Pot Limit Omaha, the game where variance seems to know no bounds.

Where variance enables this kind of upswing, there must also be downswings, as every poker player who's played a certain amount of hands knows. Really, every poker player? For some, it seems, the variance plays a subordinate role and their own winnings graph only knows one direction: straight up.

One such phenomenon this year is Finnish PLO high stakes player Jens Kyllönen. The 21 year old poker pro from Helsinki crushed the high PLO limits over the last months with impressive results. He played a huge amount, given that there was not a lot of action at the higher and highest stakes. In April alone, Jeans, his online nickname, won over $1.7 million from 45,000 hands.

Winner of the EPT Copenhagen 2009: Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen

First big success: EPT Copenhagen 2009

Jens Kyllönen has been a well-known face on the poker scene for two years. After his first big online success in 2008 (ECOOP Main Event for around $300,000), he won the EPT Copenhagen Main Event for the equivalent of $1.1 million at just 19 years old.

In the same year there were more cash wins, including 40,000 euro for 12th place at the EPT Main Event, as well as 27,300 euro for 3rd place at the Fennia Grand Slam in his home town of Helsinki. Results which more than speak for themselves and quickly made a name for him.

However, since then Jeans has also experienced the unfriendly face of variance, especially in live MTTs. Even though his game since his success in Copenhagen is "ten times better", as he writes in his blog, he hardly had any pleasing tournament results in 2010.

This year he's working hard again on his MTT game, although success has been fairly evasive in Paris, Berlin and Madrid. At 21 years old, the Fin, also known as "Mini Ziig" in homage to Ilari Sahamies, can now play live poker in the USA and take part in the WSOP.

The new Ziigmund?

Online, Kyllönen's focus over the last two years has been fixed on Pot Limit Omaha Cash Games. Including rakeback, Jeans just managed to break the $1 million mark at the end of 2010. An impressive result indeed, however in his blog he is quick to mitigate his success: if you take away the losses in MTT and include tax deductions Fins have to pay on poker winnings from sites outside the EU (e.g. Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars), the million mark is still a long way off. Not to mention if you consider the rate of the euro.

Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen

The statements and observations you can read both about and by Jeans, give the impression that, for his age, he is a very calm, grounded young man. He knows exactly that success in poker comes first and foremost from work. Dedication, discipline and the drive to constantly improve his game set him apart.

So, on one hand he fulfills the cliche of the poker playing Fin, on the other, he also bears similarities to other young players who have been able to record big successes at the high stakes. Given this attitude, there's less danger that Jeans will have problems with tilt or that he might lose control because of the size of his winnings.

It certainly seems the he's had a real breakthrough this year. His capacity and winnings are continually growing as he mixes the limits again and again to play more hands. 

$1.7 million in April

His legendary success of $1.7 million in April is the jewel in his poker crown to date. It's also worth mentioning that Jeans, who also goes by the handle of Ingenious89 at FTP and Jeans89 at PokerStars, has been playing more or less exactly EV, including in April. Even though here setups, which also fall under variance, aren't taken into account, a colossal upswing is usually reflected differently in the graph. In May he added a further $200,000 in winnings to the previous month's success. He has played over 200,000 hands in PLO this year.

On 1st June, Jens 'Jeans' Kyllönen announced that he would no longer be contributing to his blog on Coinfilp. PokerStrategists can still look forward to seeing his PLO videos and reading his musings on the game at PokerStrategy.com. A clear win for the content we offer here at PokerStrategy.com. Welcome on board, Jeans!