High Stakes Round-up: Galfond Bounces Back, Grundy's Graph, Blom Swings (Again)
March has been kind to Phil Galfond, who has gone from one of the biggest losers of 2012 to one of the biggest winners. Viktor Blom has had another turbulent week, and Ben Grundy has almost hit his profit goal for the year already.
The High Stakes Round-up is a weekly summary of all the goings-on in the world of high stakes cash games. Find out what the rail birds are talking about, who the top winners and losers are, plus catch the biggest pots of the week.
Galfond mounts huge comback
It wasn't that long ago that high stakes icon Phil 'MrSweets28' Galfond was licking his wounds after a $678k downswing which saw him become the biggest losing cash game player of 2012 so far.
Well, he dropped down in stakes for a while, took some time off, worked on his blog and came back stronger.
Not only is he one of the biggest winning players of the week for nearly $400,000, he is also up around $1,166,686 for March overall. All this means that he is actually up around $723,303 for 2012 so far.
He is also currently enjoying a lot of praise for his blog and charity work away from the table and it is great to see one of the good guys of poker doing well.
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| Galfond back in the winner's circle. |
Grundy's graph
He doesn't blog often, but when he does, it usually involves a sick graph. This week online PLO legend Ben "MilkyBarKid" Grundy has been blogging about the high stakes games.
His aim for the year would be to be up $1 million, and he has nearly got there, winning about $600k on PokerStars and $300k on selected Euro sites.
So with just $100k to go, will he be taking the rest of the year off if he gets there? We doubt it somehow.
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| Just $100k off the million dollar goal |
Blom's gonna Blom
Yet another rollercoaster week for Viktor "Isildur1" Blom, who not only played his eagerly-awaited SuperStar Showdown match with Isaac Haxton but also put in plenty of hours with the high stakes regulars. On Sunday, he was up over $850k at one point but dropped around half of that to finish $420k up.
The tide turned on Tuesday, however, when he lost $400k, half of which went to his next showdown opponent Alex "Kanu7" Millar. All in all, Blom finished the week about $120k in profit, but was nearly up a million at one point.
You can see him in action against Kanu7 in the SuperStar Showdown against Kanu7 this Sunday, on PokerStars, at 12:00 ET.
Biggest pot of the week
For the second week in a row, the biggest pot of the week was won by ChaoRen160 against, you guessed it, Isildur1. This time it was for the princely sum of $172k.
Biggest winners and losers this week
It was a huge week for Phil Galfond as we have already mentioned, but pipping him to the post by just a few thousand dollars was unknown player EireAbu. On the other end of the chart, it was another bad week for Ilari Sahamies, and a rare losing week for PokerStrategy.com coach jenskyllonen.
Top 5 online winners March 09-16 |
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| Place | Name | Winnings | ||
| 1st | EireAbu (PokerStars) | $401,848 | ||
| 2nd | Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond (PokerStars) | $398,984 | ||
| 3rd | Terken89 (PokerStars) | $331,682 | ||
| 4th | Sauce123 (PokerStars) | $260,310 | ||
| 5th | RaiseOnce (PokerStars) | $207,512 | ||
| Tracked by HighStakesDB.com | ||||
Top 5 online losers March 09-16 |
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| Place | Name | Winnings | ||
| 1st | Ilari "Ilari FIN" Sahamies (PokerStars) | -$359,236 | ||
| 2nd | verve.oasis (PokerStars) | -$344,146 | ||
| 3rd | Jens "Jeans89" Kyllönen (PokerStars) | -$303,468 | ||
| 4th | takechip (PokerStars) | -$262,093 | ||
| 5th | Johnthefast (PokerStars) | -$208,411 | ||
| Tracked by HighStakesDB.com |
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