Alex Foxen

After live poker scuttled along the gangplank on its way to receiving a belly full of saltwater, those who make a living at that artform moved online to paint a new picture.

Alex Foxen is one of these live poker powerhouses. 

You don’t win back-to-back Global Poker Index (GPI) Player of the Year awards and maintain a stranglehold on the GPI World Rankings with a record 37-consecutive weeks in the number one slot unless you are all over the game like lice on a toddler.

On March 27, with everyone quarantined, Foxen made a passionate plea to PokerStars via Twitter to reopen his account after they shut him down without supplying a reason. Judging by his PocketFives results, that account is still gathering dust. 

Foxen may have earned the vast majority of his $6-7m in online multi-table tournament (MTT) winnings on PokerStars (playing under the pseudonym ‘bigfox86’), but you get the feeling that’s about to change.

The GPI World #1 needs online poker, now, more than ever, and if PokerStars won’t provide him with the platform, then off to GGPoker, Americas Cardroom (ACR) and partypoker he will trot. A fox will chase sheep no matter where those sheep may be. 

Foxen recently proved that he’s no online poker stowaway, taking $800,000 from the Poker Masters Online Series on partypoker. Foxen finished in the money (ITM) on seven occasions, including conquering a field of 99-entrants in Event #2: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em for a career-high online score of $309,677. 

There’s no time to blink in Foxen’s world.

The young American went into the final weekend of the Poker Masters Online harbouring hopes of winning his first Purple Jacket. After all, he had done it before, turning in an incredible performance at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Five Diamond at the Bellagio in the Winter to defend his GPI PoY title at the death. 

Foxen didn’t end up on the Poker Masters podium, but he did bank a six-figure score to ease his sorrows. Foxen topped a 256-entrant field in a $3k POWERFEST event on partypoker for $239,413. It was a final table filled with the finest cheekbones in online poker with Yuri Dzvielevski, Nick Petrangelo and Linus Loeliger all featuring. 

Add the POWERFEST win to the $800,000 in Poker Masters earnings, and Foxen has almost doubled his lifetime earnings on partypoker in the past fortnight. 

Who needs PokerStars?

Results

  1. Alex Foxen – $239,413
  2. Yuri Dzivielevski – $173,777
  3. Jordi Urlings – $123,874
  4. Daniil Lukin – $91,585
  5. Nick Petrangelo – $64,579
  6. Linus Loeliger – $49,315
  7. Benjamin Rolle – $36,399
  8. Bruno Volkmann – $27,005

Foxen currently ranks #75 in the PocketFives World Rankings.

In Other Online Poker News

In other online poker news, Foxen’s partner, and the GPI top-ranked female player, Kristen Bicknell, flew over the $4m in lifetime earnings mark after a blistering showing on GGPoker last week.

Between 20-27 April, Bicknell earned over a half a million dollars in gross profit playing on the former East-facing site that’s very firmly fixed on the West.

Here are Bicknell’s top four results of the week.

  1. 1st in a 38-entrant $5k event for $64,764.99
  2. 2nd in a 39-entrant $5k for $46,691.85
  3. 1st in a 85-entrant $2.5k for $44,304.64
  4. 1st in a 48-entrant $2.5k for $43,565.06
  5. 2nd in a 87-entrant $2.5k for $39,829.81

Bicknell currently ranks #41 in the PocketFives World Rankings.

From new school to old school, and Luke Schwartz binked a decent score on Tuesday night, beating a 116-entrant field to take down the $1,050 Super Tuesday No-Limit Hold’em event on PokerStars for $27,398.26

Schwartz, who plies his trade on the online cash game scene, has now earned more than $3m playing online MTTs with the bulk of those winnings coming on PokerStars. 

It’s his biggest score since finishing 3/2255 in a $530 NLHE Progressive Knockout (PKO) event for $42,402.56 during the 2019 Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) on PokerStars.

Schwartz currently ranks #714 in the PocketFives World Rankings.

Pigeon.

The high stakes poker world is hardly spinning around like a seagull, right-wing smashed by a serial killer’s slingshot, but boy oh boy has the Phil Galfond challenge attracted more eyeballs than a strip poker livestream.

On November 19, in a bid to make Run It Once Poker more crop circle than Arctic Circle, Phil Galfond, issued a high stakes heads-up challenge to every single player in the universe.

Galfond wanted to face rival online poker training coaches in sessions of €100/€200 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) and offered similar but negotiable terms for all other forms of poker to mere mortals.

With the tap turned on, a trickle soon became a tsunami with a high volume flicking in their interests with the zeal of a chain smoker flicking his dimps into an ashtray.

The first of these epic heads-up battles take place at 8 am (PST), January 22, where Galfond squares off, fingers and thumbs, with ‘VeniVidi1993.’ The pair will compete at stakes of €100/€200 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), four hours a day, five days a week, until they reach a ceiling of 25,000 hands.

‘Veni Vidi1993,’ is the bookies favourite with PokerShares offering odds of 1.74, with Galfond an outside bet at 2.13, There’s also a side bet up for grabs with Galfond’s €200k versus VeniVidi’s €100k.

You can watch the entire squabble on Twitch/RunItOncePoker.

Here are the rest of the jigsaw pieces.

No dates on these, yet.

The Action

ActionFreak – €150/€300 PLO over 15k hands.
Jungleman – €100/€200 PLO over 7.5k hands
Brandon Adams – $100/$200 PLO over 40hrs of live poker
Chance Kornuth – €100/€200 PLO over 25k hands
Bill Perkins & The Thirst Lounge – €100/€200 PLO over 50k hands or a €400k loss

Side Bet Info

VeniVidi1993 – Side bet of Phil’s €200k to VeniVidi’s €100k
ActionFreak – Side bet of Phil’s €150k to ActionFreak’s €150k
Jungleman – TBD
Brandon Adams – Side Bet of Phil’s $150k to Brandon’s $100k
Chance Kornuth – Side Bet of Phil’s €1m to Chance’s €250k
Bill Perkins & The Thirst Lounge – Side Bet of Phil’s $800k to Bill’s $200k

PokerShares Odds

Galfond (2.16) v VeniVidi1993 (1.73)
Galfond (2.25) v ActionFreak (1.66)
Galfond (1.91) v Jungleman (1.95)
Galfond (1.60) v Adams (2.40)

Please Sir, Can I Have Some More

There’s still time for more action.

With only Chance Kornuth taking up the online coaching challenge, it seems the attention has swerved to an online poker room battle. Rob Yong surfaced first, accepting that he would have ‘little chance of winning,’ but respects Galfond’s PR initiative, and would like to support it.

Negotiations between the RunItOnce Poker founder and partypoker associate are currently underway.

Then Luke Schwartz got involved in the gob on gob action.

A Galfond versus Schwartz battle would boost the live stream for sure, and according to an interview with PokerNews, aired on January 13, Galfond believes the match will go ahead.

One dynamite match shelved would have pitted Run It Once Poker with GGPoker. In the wake of Luke Schwartz’s early Twitter back and forth with Galfond, Bryn Kenney got involved, and it ended with Galfond offering Kenney a seat.

Kenney, however, declined.

We’ll bring you further news when we receive it.