High Stakes Round-up: Kyllonen Crushing, Sahamies Spewing, Galfond Blogging

Check out all the latest from the nosebleed tables this week, including a PokerStrategy.com coach as one of the top winners in February, Phil Galfond's latest blog, and a bad day for Ilari Sahamies.

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.

Jens Kyllonen crushing in February

jenskyllonen

PokerStrategy.com coach jenskyllonen had a fantastic year in 2011 and it is looking like 2012 is going to be equally as profitable. He is one of the biggest money winners online in February so far, at the time of writing having picked up more than $300,000 over 21,000 hands.

These winnings are almost exclusively at Pot Limit Omaha, as Jens has been crushing the $25/$50 to $200/$400 games on PokerStars this month.

This is no fluke for Jens, who last year finished over $2.3 million in profit across PokerStars and Full Tilt.

Check out Jens Kyllonen's videos for PokerStrategy.com.
 
Here he is taking down an $84k pot this week against fellow Fin Ilari Sahamies.

Grundy also crushing at his new poker pad

Right behind Jens in the winner's circle for February is PLO legend Ben 'milkybarkid' Grundy from the UK, who is up around nearly $300k this month, also from the PLO tables. Grundy blogs rarely, but it seems whenever he does, he leaves the railbirds drooling at the mouth for one reason or another.

This time around, it was because he posted some pictures on the new house he has just bought. The pad is located near Chiswick in London, which is one of the swankiest parts of the city, and the place must be worth several million pounds. As it is almost impossible to get a mortgage when you are a pro player in the UK, the chances are Grundy bought this place outright with his poker winnings.

Nice life.

Ben Grundy's new London poker pad

Sahamies not crushing

At the other end of the scale, Ilari Sahamies is licking his wounds after a big losing session, where he dropped $493,724 in one day. This was mostly at $100/$200 PLO against Rafi Amit, and $50/$100 PLO heads-up against Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom.

As you can see from his chat with Blom, he was not too happy about it:

Ilari vents to Isildur1

Phil Galfond on the ups and downs of poker

The very popular blog from high stakes supremo Phil Galfond continues to impress the poker world, and his latest posting does not disappoint. In it, he focusses on the emotional side of a poker downswing and comes to a realisation about the role of emotions in poker:

"We are human, and as much as we desensitize ourselves to the swings of poker, as much as we tell ourselves that we’re indifferent to whether he was bluffing this hand or not because we made the right decision against his range, we can’t completely do away with how those things make us feel.  I am better at separating logic and emotion than almost all of the people I know, and I can’t be a full robot, so I assume that most of you can’t either."

"Our emotions exist.  We can still be logical, and make calculated decisions, but we need to factor our emotions into our decisions rather than fighting a losing battle trying to eliminate them.  This, of course, requires a good amount of self-awareness – one of the top 5 areas of skill that makes a great poker player, in my opinion."

You can check out the full blog here.

Self-awareness is one of the top skills that make a poker player, according to Phil

Biggest pot of the week

Although it was no means the biggest pot of the year, this pot from the last seven days was the biggest, and certainly one of the sickest, from the $100/$200 PLO tables:

Biggest winners and losers of the week

Although Jens Kyllonen and Ben Grundy are crushing February in total, the week belongs to Rafi Amit, who had a very good week, mainly at the expense of Ilari Sahamies, who is the biggest loser of the week.